Purely anecdotal I'm afraid, but I have a similar macho mental image of Yorkshire. As late as the 1980s, among the parents at my very middle-class Doncaster prep school, there was a clear sense that boys were more important. I don't think this is just resentment at my childhood, because it rarely happened in my family; what I saw in my friends' families was time and money and encouragement being lavished on the boys, while the girls made do. It was quite common for the boys of a family to be sent on to a public school while the girls went to the local school, or at best on a scholarship to Wakefield Girls High. My brother and I were also very unusual in having a mother who worked when her children were under 11, and some families made it clear that they pitied us for this.