I think you have to differentiate two things here:
I guess what @aramis erak meant was playing in a quasi-realistic historical setting with a bit of magic. Which is okay, if every player knows in advance and has fun playing it. I understand that playing against such challenges can be fun - I wouldn't mind giving a GoT style game a try. And I don't think that he will incorporate such social structures into *every* medieval-tech level fantasy setting.
What I meant is that you should avoid adding "classic sexism" (and only this example) to settings where it doesn't make sense or where there would be no reason to have predominately patriarchal societies all over the globe just "because medieval". Especially if you do not tell your players that you plan on doing so. Settings like FR or Eberron or the generic D&D setting are not medieval. They have baseline medieval technology, but add a lot of magic, and even mage-tech. They don't offer any mechanical or canonical reason to why male and female characters should have different roles, expectations or opportunities at all. Unless you want to incorporate such ideas into your campaign. And if you do (which is fine), I'd make sure to keep things balanced and add different biases to accentuate certain regions, and not to make the baseline assumption that each and every country is normatively patriarchal.
I guess what @aramis erak meant was playing in a quasi-realistic historical setting with a bit of magic. Which is okay, if every player knows in advance and has fun playing it. I understand that playing against such challenges can be fun - I wouldn't mind giving a GoT style game a try. And I don't think that he will incorporate such social structures into *every* medieval-tech level fantasy setting.
What I meant is that you should avoid adding "classic sexism" (and only this example) to settings where it doesn't make sense or where there would be no reason to have predominately patriarchal societies all over the globe just "because medieval". Especially if you do not tell your players that you plan on doing so. Settings like FR or Eberron or the generic D&D setting are not medieval. They have baseline medieval technology, but add a lot of magic, and even mage-tech. They don't offer any mechanical or canonical reason to why male and female characters should have different roles, expectations or opportunities at all. Unless you want to incorporate such ideas into your campaign. And if you do (which is fine), I'd make sure to keep things balanced and add different biases to accentuate certain regions, and not to make the baseline assumption that each and every country is normatively patriarchal.