It was an entirely different system. From America's earliest days, men handled the civic rules; women held honored status through theological rules and were of paramount importance by custom among those men who upheld the dominant Christian culture. Although there were always some who fell short, Christ instructed men to love their wives as He loved the church. The social measure of true manhood in frontier times was the temperate, hard-working man who protected and provided for his family, and was the spiritual leader of the family. A wife was a man's necessary partner in the agriculture-based economy; and the children she gave him assured enough labor and a continual ownership of private property.
At the beginning of the 20th century that led up to WW1 and WW2, we saw the rise of immigration by non-Christians, industrialization and urbanization that began stripping earlier generations of American women of their status, although many families attempted to continue the pattern until the 1970s, when Marxism overtook the universities and the judiciary.
Having given women the right to vote from the start would not have deprived them of special status—it would have given them equal rights.
Jeesh!
If you’re trying to argue that women have fewer rights now than they did in the early 20th century, then you’re not making a very good case. The “status” that women supposedly had in the early 20th century included the inability to vote.”