This is an interesting question, and started a lot of thoughts going. (If some of the points below have already been made, it's because I get the digest form.)
Suicide as a method of showing ultimate disapproval, as the samurai were famous for, is not an Orlanthi attitude.
I strongly believe that trying to take your enemy with you is the approved method when that can be done, particularly for Orlanthi men. If your life has turned into a tragic saga, the least that you can do is go for the bloody, everybody-dies ending. This way, you should at least live on in song.
I don't think that the Orlanthi believe that the straw death (peacefully in bed at an advanced age) is dishonourable. Well, maybe Storm Bulls and Humakti do, but not average Barntari. It isn't heroic, of course, but why should a man go out of his way to die earlier unless there is a compelling reason? You need the oldsters to keep the memory of the earlier days alive as long as possible, to teach the young. Plus, the elders know most of the magic and the rituals.
If there is famine in the land, it could be considered honourable of the weakest, least productive or powerful clan members to let go of life to preserve the clan. Something along the lines of the Inuit practice. Again, this might be disguised as going on a long hunting trip, or looking for healing herbs in the wild hills, or spending all your strength in a bid to bring the favour of the gods back to the tribe.
On the specific example of better dead than red, this usually would cause the Lunars to kill your family/clan/tribe, depending on the rank of the Lunar assaulted or killed. Wergild is just not the Lunar way! So, after stories of the first couple of retaliatory mass executions made the rounds, this course would probably be squelched by clearer-thinking elders elsewhere as bad for the group. Which is just playing into the Lunar hands, I grant you, but what can you do? (Scenario ideas should be plenty for this one!)
Other instances when suicide might be acceptable,
(some furnished by my husband, Ian): to avoid
corruption by Chaos; if you are a spy, to avoid
capture (against Lunars, see above!); to end a feud
(if wergild cannot be paid, or will not be accepted).
Whether women approach these situations differently is a fascinating topic all in itself, especially since they are so frequently caught in the middle between birth clan and husband's clan in feuds. The reputation of Ernalda's women to be able to find another way, less frequent weapons training for women, plus the characterization of women as the colder, more practical, less emotional and less flighty of the genders may also contribute to women being less prone than men to try for the bloody solutions.
Women are most probably cast in, and depended upon, to be the peacemakers and peacebrokers between feuding clans or tribes. They probably have to fight an uphill battle against the inherent tendency to go for vengeance that many of the most memorable tales enshrine. (Orlanth may have gone down into the underworld to bring back Yelm, but he'd killed him first. Most Orlanthi won't have the magic to bring a victim back, even if they admit a wrong in time to perform the ritual.)
Nevertheless, women are Orlanthi, too, and slights to their pride or honour are not likely to be forgiven easily. Remember, all imbibe pride with their mothers' milk. Wherever you have great pride, not to be shamed and not to be humbled are very powerful urges.
There are some interesting accounts in some of the Icelandic sagas, in particular, of women being renowned for biding their time for the appropriate revenge. Such as the wife who, when her father and brothers were beseiging her husband in their house, deliberately cut her hair into small pieces so that her husband couldn't make a new bowstring from it when his broke.
Then there's the feud in the Nibelungenlied, started when Kriemheld, wife of Siegfried, claimed precedence going into church over Brunhild (wife of Siegfried's liege, Gunther), on the grounds that Brunhild was merely Siegfried's concubine, because through some trickery, he'd enjoyed her favours first.
To go back to one of the hypothetical situations, I
agree that a girl raped by her father might well
commit suicide because of the turmoil of her emotions
(and if adolescent, add hormones to the mix). She
hasn't got a good option, and the whole ethos of her
society will make her lean towards a dramatic action.
That it's a bad idea - well, so what? Lots of people
do idiotic things.
There are probably specific teaching songs that would show women what to do (and what not to do) in such a situation (preferably to avoid it altogether, of course). Whether a woman in that situation would sit back, realize that however bad something is, sometime it's happened to someone else, and there is a way to deal with it, is another question.
In almost any saga that I've ever read, a little
forgiveness, negotiation, humility or calm thinking
would have solved the initial problem and
short-circuited a feud. Strangely enough, these
things didn't happen. (And not just because the ones
that followed the conciliatory course aren't sung so
loudly, it's because it may be considered the
dishonourable or coward's way.) In fact, the people
in these sagas are frequently lauded for following
gamely through on a doomed course, once the initial
(to our eyes) stupidity has set the scenery.
Opportunities to back off from the brink are passed up
by the bushel. Wisdom is praised in Orlanthi society,
but it doesn't get you remembered in a good, stirring,
tearjerking saga.
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