Why aren’t women regulated to child bearing?
I want a matriarchal system for the Clans, which means that the needs of women in the workforce can not be overruled by their need to bear and rear children. In the Atares series by McCollum, Alta women did not serve in the Navy because during the frontier days, they needed to have 10 children and had no energy to spare.
I think the difference here will be that the Spacer women will not be on frontiers - the asteroid ships are just like their space habitats (read Limbo by Rich Cook, it expounds on this concept). There is no real push to expand the population.
The Earthers (i.e., the colonists that hijacked The Dizzy Dean) are a different matter - they are popsicles such that they can establish a new colony on a planet and as such are on a frontier.
I want the Spacer migration to yield a different culture than the Earthers. The Earther expansion may give rise to the Trade Consortiums, but the Spacer expansion will definitely give rise to the Clans.
As such, Jenny needs a career and a family. At least until The Voodoo Lounge reaches the first system, she needs to be unwed and having children. Kochai’s family helps her out of a sense of obligation/family, but as she has other children, she does not get married.
Her job as the pilot of the scout craft is safe in that it is hardly ever used. Besides the journey end, which she can predict, and the trip to the Pandora’s Box, she mainly trains and helps out with large scale construction tasks on the asteroid.
