This is a wonderful thread. Thanks, Eleanor.

On to your first question. I think one of the places you might check out would be the School of Scottish Studies. They have an excellent collection of the work songs of the Scottish Gael. In that collection, you can find songs, such as the waulking/fulling/milling songs. Waulking songs were those songs sung by women while they were fulling/shrinking the woolen cloth. The process could take a while, and was onerous and boring. To make things go easier, the women would sing. Many of the old songs, some of which have been dated back several hundred years, were composed by the women, on subjects which were important to them.

Try to stick with what you find on the Scottish side, since in America (at least in Cape Breton), men were allowed to join at the milling table. (Some women say it was because they wanted to know about what the women were doing.) So here in Cape Breton at least, other songs were brought into the tradition. Some of those songs which were particularly pointed against men were left to languish. Many of those songs were lost and other songs were brought in to fill the gap.

Check those songs out. They would have been a form of song (as well as other work songs), which women were especially interested in. Other cultures besides the Scottish one used songs of the sort.