cont'
Women ran the households but the men had all the legal responsibilities and it's the same story in the third world today, why do you think most child labourers are boys? It's because they have the legal responsibility to support all their female family members, if an Afghan man dies suddenly the burden of supporting the female family members falls upon his sons if he has any or his brothers.
So patriarchy is really only a legal system holding men solely accountable for their families and in Australia that hasn't existed for a very long time if it ever existed at all.
You have to wonder how today's conditions are a better deal for women?
They're not because nothing has changed, when women were largely free of any legal consequences for their actions they still behaved responsibly for the most part and we can be sure that was out of respect and a love of their husbands and a desire to make things work, not because they were oppressed.
See that's the big crime of Feminism,the denial of emotions, husbands and wives throughout history have loved and respected each other, they worked together then just as they do now, a man and a woman united to take on the world.

One of the issues we face today, is making judgements from today's perspective about conditions or issues in the past.

Usually when someone is making a point, other details are conveniently left out.

An example of this is about women getting the vote in the UK,

<The thing I didn't realise until very recently was that he, and the men who died in his trench,
<and most of the other 420,000 British casualties, couldn't even vote. Most of the men -
<British anyway - who fought in WWI didn't even have the right to vote.
http://hereticalsex.blogspot.com.au/2006/06/green-fields-of-france.html

There were once debtor prisons where a husband could be gaoled for debts incurred by his wife.

Wolly,
The time gap between all men getting the vote and all women getting the vote in the UK was seven years and lest we forget the fact that the first wave Feminists were very much pro war and even participated in the "White Feather" campaigns to shame men and boys into enlisting.

Jay of Melbourne, "lest we forget the fact that the first wave Feminists were very much pro war and even participated in the "White Feather" campaigns to shame men and boys into enlisting"

In Australia where Bob Menzies depended on his strong women's vote, youths who did not have the vote and could not even enter a bar were conscripted by a ballot(!) to die in Vietnam. In 1964 compulsory National Service for 20-year-old males was introduced under the National Service Act (1964).

Feminists celebrate the 1965 'victory' for women to drink in a public bar, 'won' by Merle Thornton who chained herself to the foot rail of a public bar in Brisbane. An 'iconic' victory according to the feminists to stand cheek to jowl with sweaty labourers in blue singlets.

It was a very lonely battle indeed for the Youth Campaign Against Conscription. Even the obvious, dreadful reality of the Tet Offensive in 1968 didn't sway any support from feminists (or from the women's vote). In Queensland, where feminists celebrated entry to public bars -they always had access to the all other areas including main bars and saloons and few male office workers preferred the public bar- still no worries for those young men coming back from a wr that wasn't a war, broken and in body bags.

Where was the 'equality' in that, feminists?

Feminism always was about smug, materialistic, supremely-selfish, elitist, educated middle class women, and bugger everyone else and especially those women they saw as below them and who might chose another path (and the feminists scolded them for it!).

We forget that the ladies lounge was off limits to unaccompanied males.

Wolly B,

Yes and the feminist 'victory' had the effect of closing those clean and private areas where table service was the norm for women. One of those unexpected negative consequences, no doubt.

A Pyrrhic victory, some might say.