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Notes -
Is this a 'Western cultural understanding'? I imagine this is a pretty universal phenomenon, found in virtually all other cultures too. And even modern woke feminist media, which is ostensibly trying to deconstruct/criticise Western cultural traditions ends up reproducing the same thing (without realising it?), which is half the reason woke media sucks, because more often then not the female heroine has no agency despite the story pretending like she does.
I mean it's been more than a century and men are still trying to figure out whether it was a good idea to let women out of the kitchen. So the roots are definitely deep. Almost no culture in the world is considered sociologically matriarchal, so in majority cases the men are the decision makers so again that would bias the world view towards men as agents and women as inherently unagentic.
However there is another alternative system that does arise in certain cultural time periods. Generally during the warrior class in high levels of activity time periods. Such that often the men would go to war and the women would be the home care takers along with handling finances and the family business or their family part of the feudal estate. In these instances women are decision makers and are well versed in financial matters.
It is my belief that if industrialization had not taken place, then this would likely have been the final outcome of gender roles. A woman respected within her own sphere of influence as a well educated and skilled person but still within a societal expectation of her area of expertise being a woman's role.
So it would be akin to all men being soldiers, and all women being real estate agents as a firm rule or something along those lines separating certain skilled jobs as for women, and others for men, both being respected.
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