If women are oppressed or were oppressed, then this was probably without women's own consent. In other words, women had to be somehow forced to accept the subservient role. Some violence, something has to be done to women in order to make them accept their second class status.

But what is it? What puts them or used to put them in their place?

1) Is it the law/the police? Does the law put women in their place? Does the law punish women harshly?

Well, women rarely make up more than 5% of prison population. There is not much difference between the West and the rest on this issue.

In other words, the law is much harsher towards men than women. The law punishes men 20 times more often than women. In other words, the number of outlawed male behaviors is 20 times the number of outlawed female behaviors. So, nope.

2) The army?

Of course not. I won't waste more time on this. Not even in Saudi Arabia is army used against women.

3) Is it perhaps the religion?

Well, women are everywhere more religious than men. It's women who guide other women, usually their younger relatives, into religion. So, whatever religion does to women, whether it is violence, humiliation, brainwashing,... women are quite willing to accept it and ask for more. I suppose women aren't doing it against their own interests, certainly not for millennia. Women aren't stupid, right?

So, nope, it can't religion either, regardless of what terminally shallow atheists and """"skeptics"""" will tell you.

4) Is it the society and its prejudices? Local customs and manners?

Well, it's usually women, most often older women, who transmit social customs through their children, both male and female, to the next generation. Whatever men invent has to go through women in order to be perpetuated as a societal belief. If social customs oppressed women, women themselves would be the first to notice. Women aren't stupid, right?

5) Perhaps casual violence, whether by their husbands or other men?

As far as other men go, they will much more often use violence against men than against women. Men are far more likely to get attacked on the street by other men, everywhere in the world.

What about the husbands? Was it their won husbands' violence that kept women in submission for millennia? You believe this? Erin Pizzey noticed already in early 1970s UK that DV was symmetric, and you could have sworn that 1970s UK was a patriarchy.

So, it's highly doubtful that husbands were keeping their wives in submission for thousands of years by ordinary physical violence. Generally speaking, propensity for physical violence is not a mark of privileged status.

6) If not any of the above, then what? What was it that, if women were oppressed, kept them oppressed for millennia?