Economists and sociologists tell us that the agriculture practices that prevailed in a given area had a long tail. In some parts of Southeast Asia where women played such a vital part in the agricultural economy, they also retained the advantages of matrilineal inheritance and matrilocal living, or “female philopatry”—another way of saying they stayed with their families of origin in the place where they were born. It also meant men basically had to “audition” their way into a marriage and then live surrounded by a wife’s kin, so that checks against power imbalances and male control of and
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