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I would say it is one of the most important metrics that we can actually easily quantify and track. Unless it is a finishing school or Mrs degree, university attendance means everything that is the opposite of patriarchy: 1) the woman will be removed from the guardianship of her father 2) she will be making a big investment in developing skills unrelated to being a good wife or mother 3) she will be immersed in messaging from the university in the years leading up to application and during university that developing these work skills is super valuable and important. University attendance is simply massively more central to life than whether there are women news anchors.
There are other important metrics of feminism, but it is just very hard to get good data on them, especially historically. How easy it is for a woman to divorce her husband (this is imperfectly modeled by overall divorce rate)? How easy and unstigmatized is it for a single woman to live by herself or with friends? What is the default cultural messaging from TV and authority figures? How many women have sex before marriage (with someone other than their eventual husband)? What is the actual nature of university education -- is it an Mrs degree? Are women living at home or in a sex-segrated dorm under in locus parentis? Or it more like something out of "Sex Lives of College Girls"? What percent of young women are working outside of domestic work? What percent of married women with children are working full-time outside the home?
A major problem with other metrics of feminism is that it can be very difficult to distinguish de facto from de jure. During the late Roman empire paters familia was the law of the land, but in practice is was almost abandoned and the "three days a year" rule ended up being a loophole that greatly empowered women. In early 1900s America, it was mostly de jure illegal for a man to physically punish is wife, but a spanking or a slap would often be winked at or go unpunished, and even portrayed as normal in popular media. Catholicism canon law still makes it impossible to divorce -- but then in practice annulments are given out very liberally.
And so in Saudi Arabia we see reports such as:
In an actual patriarchy, the idea a woman would call the police on a father or husband would be laughable. Now other examples from that same article show women who are more controlled. Unfortunately, it is difficult for me to know which is the more common case.
Saudi Arabia is still more patriarchal than the United States, but it seems to be a lot less patriarchal in practice than what the law or media coverage would suggest.
I didn't say women have zero recourse from ill treatment from a husband under patriarchy.
I suppose she meant zero official recourse?
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This here. Back home I come from a culture that most westerners would call patriarchal (I scoff at the association but lets humour them for a second) . That doesn't mean I could just mistreat my future wife with no consequence. I was specifically raised by my parents to always respect women and put their needs before my own (what counts as "their needs" naturally varies between cultures) and if I were to mistreat my wife I would run the risk of my own family disowning me both for moral and honour reasons as well as because were they not to do this it would jeopardise my brother's ability to find a good high status wife for himself.
Plus family bonds are very important for us so being disowned isn't like the western "never talk to your family again but otherwise live your life as you were doing before" where you can still live a fulfilling life but rather a serious and highly damaging event, it's more like the ancient exile from your city state (almost as bad as execution, as Socrates showed by his actions in the Apology) compared to a modern hypothetical exile from a city (just go to a new city and find a job there).
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