Think about Godfather. The code of honor was strict, but as far as I can remember it was men who got killed or violently attacked for breaking the code. Yeah, it's a movie, but I suppose it describes reality accurately in this respect. Or perhaps I was thinking about the Sopranos or some other Mafia dramatization.

"Honor is all our family has", could be something a poor man in a traditional society could say - or in case of Mafia in a criminal society. And I'm pretty sure he has said it thousands or millions of times. In a traditional society the honor code is what keeps you family or clan tightly together. It gives you "credit" that you can turn into alliances and help if something bad happens.

Most of the time it was men who had to have this "honor". They were, after all, the ones that operated outside homes in the unpredictable and often violent world. But women, too, had to have honor in particularly in one sense: they had to be "saleabe" in the marriage markets. Marriages were almost always contracts between families, not individuals. If a woman wasn't marriageable a great deal of security and predictability was lost.

My common sense says that it was men whose honor was challenged and who failed more often. Every day they could end up in situations where they couldn't keep their promise, for example, or show enough courage when protecting the honor of the family. Women just had to follow some pretty simple rules of chaste behavior.

No?