Well, weren't women locked out of government the very institution that would bound them to their homes, and children? I mean they weren't allowed to speak on matters of substances for a really long time. Women being involved in the sciences was almost unheard of throughout large portions of history. Although the purpose of all those things was not gender, they all played strong roles in the further subjugation of women?
I guess I just meant that government, social institutions, technology were all used to strip women of their ability to rise from inequity. Take away their ability to participate in law making, education, and technology. In a way they become reliant or subservient to men out of need to survive/thrive in those environments.
That still implies that women weren't subservient before, e.g., technology. There might be instances where women were worse off after some innovation or another but overall I think it's fair to say that technology has been neutral on the issue and, more recently, very liberating. There is no way to seriously argue that the washing machine is a patriarchal tool of oppression, yet it's not a design for social change either, it's just technology being technology.
You are definite right about that, and I guess the rest of it too. If we just assume women were treated as objects from the beginning then all the education, structure, and politics would simply be used to perpetuate an ideal that was already believed before these things were created.