What if men and women had always been held in the same esteem in all human cultures?
Define same esteem.
For western cultures by exemple.
Is for men and women being undifferenciated regarding their access to the same possibilities (then even OTL, it's not saldy happening for now, when it leads this way)?
Or is it, while men continues to keep the upper social hand, women having an important role (no XIX-like crumble of women situation)?
If it's the latter, no reintroduction of roman law from Byzantium could do (being an hard thing to do in first place) : while women were banned of many social spheres, they had a better situation, relative to Greek-Roman antiquity and later periods (it can be safely said that the individual medieval woman had more rights than the individual victorian woman) even if it's certainly lower than the situation women can enjoy nowadays.
A continuous definition of family trough matrilinear line instead of the only patrilinear one could really do, but ask for a greater germanisation of elites.
The triumph of peasant assemblies as first form of democracy would be extremly hard, but would be somewhat easier than urban's that tended to favour head of families, almost always men.
Earlier PoD would be probably easier, but having more unknown effects : it is totally possible to have a woman-friendly antiquity. While Greeks and Romans were really misogynists, Etruscean women could walk freely (and even had a proper name, not their father or spouse).
More or less, there are no Gender roles in society. Women could inherit the throne, assuming they are first in the birth order or fight in the armies and become generals. Men could spend their lives looking after the children or making clothing.
No one this this is strange.
What if men and women had always been held in the same esteem in all human cultures?