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Status of Women - A Law Mod

Use a new Demesne Law with five levels to control the jobs women can do, gender laws available & the decisions women rulers can take. Increasing status costs piety. Decreasing status rewards piety. Piety amounts depend on religion, culture, and law level.

Why this Mod rather than a straightforward Equality Mod?

Straight forward-- in concept, definiitely not in execution! -- equality mods, have been done multiple times before by a number of different people (see here and here on the Workshop if you're looking for one). All props to the authors! However playing my own simplified versions of the same sort of thing I've found that unfortunately that approach isn't very satisfying for me. It makes gaining and sustaining power for women a bit easy with too few tradeoffs and, at least for me, tends to break my suspension of disbelief, especially when the AI gets in on the act. It seems I need something with a bit more game-play.

On the other hand, the vanilla game is very rigid when it comes to the roles of women, your culture and religion define their roles and that's it, outside of a few event chains. That the rules that the characters have to contend with are rigid to them makes sense, but that the rules themselves are unchangingly set in stone really doesn't. It is both not very interesting from a gameplay point of view, and also tends to break my suspension of disbelief, only from the other direction.

Reading up a very little about women of the period, it seems to me that ideas about women and their status and roles wax and wane across time and place, and individual women themselves find ways to sneak and push around the formal rules to the ire, admiration, consternation and pushback by male power.

This mod then, is a small attempt to get a bit more of that fluidity into the game. It is a compromise between what I would really like in terms of gameplay, what seems (very very) vaguely plausible to me historically, and what I found I could implement without entirely tearing out all my hair!

It has ended up with the emphasis a lot more lot on wax and wane, than sneak and push, with a pretty anachronistic linear scale of status. It's also a lot more restrictive than an Equality mod, but I hope y'all will find its approach interesting to play.


The Five Law Levels

Five new laws levels form the new 'Status of Women' law group for each landed character's demesne. Cathars and Messalians don't see the laws as they continue to get full equality by default. The precise details vary depending on the character's religion and culture, and the tooltip will be your best guide, but they always follow the same basic scheme.

• Traditional - Everything works as vanilla. Cannot be set if the gender law is Absolute-Cognatic.
  
• Marginal - Costs 200 piety, opens up the Spymaster job to all female dynasty members, your concubines, and any of your female lovers.
  
• Limited - Costs 400 piety, opens up the Steward job to married women, widows and nuns. Pagan and Christian women rulers can now hold grand hunts. Agnatic-Cognatic gender law.unlocked for Tribal rulers who are not Tengri or Muslim.
  
• Moderate - Costs 800 piety, opens up the Chancellor job to your female dynasty members, your mother, your wives, and your landed women vassals. Absolute-Cognatic gender law is unlocked if you don't already have access to it. Muslim women rulers can hold Furusiyyas. Appropriate Mongol women rulers can hold the Nerge. Women Rulers can lead their own troops in their own wars (but not their liege's)
  
• Notable - Costs 1600 piety, requires Absolute-Cognatic gender law, opens up the Marshall job to your female dynasty members, your mother, you wives, and your landed women vassals and allows them to lead troops.

There are a number of constraints on changing the law regardless of its level, along with some additional effects.

• Religion and Culture adjust the piety cost depending on how those religions and cultures are portrayed in the game. For instance Basques get big discounts.
  
• A ruler can usually only change the law once in their lifetime.
  
• A ruler can only change the law one step at a time, or switch directly back to traditional status.
  
• In order to provide a temptation to lower women's status, and make realms with the higher statuses for women very rare, characters gain rather than lose piety when they reduce the status of women.
  
• The AI will (currently too aggressively) change the laws depending on their whim, traits, and piety, not just players.
  
• When the law is changed courtiers and vassals will have their own opinions of the change, and vassals get the opportunity to align their law with that of their liege for free via an event.
  
• Pagans can't use Marginal Status as pagans can appoint any pagan woman spymaster at Traditional already. Limited becomes the first status higher than Traditional for them.
  
• Religious heads, and religious vassals will not like the higher law levels, although female dynasty members will.
  
• Lunatics can ignore some of these rules.
  
• As can 'World Historic Figures' if they are also female. Namely: Saoyshant, Reformer of a Pagan Religion, Mender of the Great Schism, Restorer of the Roman Empire, Founder of the Holy Roman Empire, Founder of Israel, Unifier of India, Founder of a Custom Empire.

Usage with 2.3.x versions of CK2

If you want to use this mod with an older version of CK2, Grab the appropriate version from the Paradox forum thread (see below) and install it manually. This version is only compatible with 2.4.x.

Known Problems

• The AI is currently stupidly eager to change the law.
  
• I'm not convinced the law is always set correctly when titles change hands.
  
• The events vassals get when the law is changed may end up with too many options for all of them to be displayed.
  
• The text for the effect of changing the law usually overflows the confirmation dialog.
  
• In lieu of matrilineal marriage Muslim women rulers get a decision to ask their husband to become a member of their dynasty at Moderate status and above. This is a bad solution. Needs to be replaced with something better (probably involving tutoring?).
  
• (1.0.1) Weirdness if the law is changed by event whilst a vote on a law change is outstanding.
  
• (1.0.2) Religious head seems is not always getting correct opinion modifier, sometimes getting the opinion modifier for religious vassals instead/as well (CK2 bug?)

Compatibility with other Mods

This mod changes both major and minor decisions, council jobs, and gender laws, which is a fair chunk of core stuff. It should work with my Founder of Republic mods, but I'm really not sure about anything else. It almost certainly won't work properly with any sort of major overhaul/rebalance or equality mod.

Integrating this into your own Mod

If you want to include this as part of your own bigger mod, that's okay as long as you give me and this mod a credit. If you want to make and release a variant (i.e. a version that runs on prestige, but is otherwise the same) that's also okay, but make it clear that your mod is 'based on' this one in a prominent place.

Paradox forum thread & Manual Install

Forum Thread https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/index.php?threads/status-of-women-a-law-mod.798561
Manual Install: http://lithe-runes.com/files/StatusOfWomen_1.3.2_ck2_2.4.3.zip