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It seems to me that any reasonable length comment is incapable of capturing the complexity of any viewpoint.

> why are you limiting your analysis to intra-household dynamics only?

Because before industrialization:

1. Most households were businesses, and

2. Society largely functioned as a union of households, not a union of individuals (Indonesia is still this way, btw). Interestingly this was the basis of Aristotle's social theory and is generally considered to be representative of the Indo-European world before industrialization. From this perspective democracy would mean "one household, one vote" which is a fair summary of the pre-19th Amendment status quo, actually. Obviously this doesn't work if votes are private (and secret) or if women don't have the keys to power by collaborating to get agendas passed.

So intra-household dynamics is the question of power where those are the case.

Edit: the other problem is that extra-household dynamics and gender before industrialization leads to all kinds of apple/orange comparisons. How do you compare political assembly membership with collective plotting on political issues while washing laundry down by the river? Does it matter if the man's wife will likely know how he voted?



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