Just saying, Balanced policy used to be pretty settlement happy too.
A bit yes. Patricians also make their second sons the soldier son...but the Storm Tribes are cavalry based, so the Yeomen definitely brought some charioteers with them if they are winning.
...which encourages noble daughters to pursue warfare if they want to social climb by means other than marriage.
You do not see how this can make the Second Son problem worse?
Women have been allowed(or rather, not forbidden) to join the army and militia since forever. However, they usually cannot meet the physical strength standards required to rise through the ranks the normal way, while our elites use daughters for marriage rather than war.
In essence, the Harmysyn reforms are not about allowing female warriors, because we've always allowed those even as all the pressures squeezed them out. Its about creating a commissioned officer class which patricians can directly buy into commanding ranks, rather than climb through the ranks after buying into the cavalry.
Which has the side effect of allowing girls to enter war because if you can buy commissions, its less difficult for a female officer to prove herself to get promoted than for a female chariot archer to perform well enough to be promoted into an officer rank(where she'd have to deal with having an objectively lower draw weight on her bow and thus less range).
