The books kind of cover how the society works for women.
Eco people are the standard. They are too low status to have a handmaid so if they have children, those children are their natural children. Marriages start to be more arranged and an econodaughter could only really marry an econoson. She'd not go to school and be expected to learn from her mother. Boys would go to learn a trade of some kind.
Eden was an econowife when she married Nick and therefore low status. I suspect she wasn't made a handmaid to make an example to other young people not to run off for love. That and she wasn't pregnant already. They likely decided that as she hadn't got pregnant from either Nick or the guardian that she wasn't fertile. I'm sure another econowife who did have a child told June that they threatened them (I.e mothers) with having their children taken and being made handmaids l.
Wives are the wives of commanders only. Their daughters (either their birth children or those from handmaids) would go to a school for domestic arts like Hannah does. They'd be trained to be commanders wives and married off young.
The long term plan was that women would chose to become handmaids aunts or Martha's. Perhaps from a sense of duty or because there were few choices if they didn't have a male relative to support them.