David Friedman writes about the place of children in the SCA (and how it has unfortunately changed):

I was taught to use a sewing machine by a twelve year old girl; a few years later she was the moving spirit behind a puppet theater. But that has gradually changed. More and more over the years, children who come to SCA events are expected, not to help set up the hall or cook the dinner or run the event, but to attend "children's activities."

The word you're looking for is "garb".

Of course, there are men who make and wear elaborate garb (the idea that wanting to wear fancy clothes is unmasculine is a fairly recent innovation as far as I can tell), and women who fight.

The SCA doesn't exactly have something for everybody (for example, I have a strong preference for sf fandom), but it does have something for both those who want a costume party and those who want to do carefully researched recreation of period skills.

One advantage of recreating the good parts of a past society is that there's a full human range of activities-- cooking, games, fighting, etc.

One thing the SCA does well is to have fighting awards, service awards, and arts and sciences awards. All we've got is posting to LW awards.