Maldor is the linchpin of TSoY in that it holds the Shadow of Yesterday: the past is everywhere in sight and its weight oppresses the land every day. A game set in Maldor will not necessarily go all revolutionary, however; characters may well end up championing the feudal obligations, transforming the shallow rule of warlords into a real social contract between the rulers and the ruled. I try to reflect this in the crunch, which provides some functional-but-not-quite means for upholding a society in an essentially lawless, feudal context.
Maldor also has a function as the point of relation between the fantasy genre and Near; this is why I start the book with it. Basically Maldor is your normal fantasy setting, so if you want to play around with thieves’ guilds and such, this is the place. There are only few fantasy staples that can’t be inserted here at the group’s pleasure, and ADVENTURE CAMPAIGNS are more than natural, whether they only start or remain indefinitely in Maldor.
Maldorian society is traditionally chauvinistic, which means more for the upper classes and less for the lower. It’s become pretty typical in fantasy roleplaying through recent years to actively ignore this facet of medievalism in favor of gender transparency, which is something you can easily do here as well for player characters (or everybody) if you want; however, I suggest considering the opposite tack as well: if you want to play a woman of Maldor, is it not an important part of her identity that she has to deal with these issues in her life?
My own first instinct would be to simply play a male character if I wanted to avoid dealing with this (admittedly well-worn, at least here in my own play environment) issue. Another important point is that at least in my experience bad play around gender has often resulted from disabling play as opposed to enabling; the Story Guide shouldn’t simply use gender as a sadistic hammer for harassing some players.
In practice: if you are Story Guiding for female characters and feel like forbidding the character from leaving her home or speaking in public, consider the situation as a genuine choice for the player, not a prerequisite for play; should they choose to have her rebel, respect the character’s right to try to change her circumstances or even the world.