Only my tuppen'orth but it seems that MacColl was using terms he'd picked up from agricultural labouring gypsies and in my opinion he was a fine songsmith. Machines and quines (when pronounced queens) rhymes nicely and the line scans well so I think the females being placed before the males was purely for that technical requirement. As far as the meaning is concerned; I think he was simply re-iterating the fact that machines were driving the labourers (both male and female) from the fields.

I once amazed a very drunken gypsy at a party by singing (well, my version of singing) the whole of it. He was convinced it was an ancient Romany song known only to Romanies.