So while I've done some detailed worldbuilding for Lindsen and its surrounding nations, I haven't even drawn a map for the Orenland yet, and all I know is that it's slightly more advanced and it's supposed to be matriarchal. But how might it have become so even with agriculture being developed?
I contemplated having the entire continent or at least the part where humans originated be rainforest with plentiful fruits to make gathering more viable, while dangerous animals meant men were needed for defense and therefore more expendable. However, this is immensely stupid for obvious reasons. Does anybody have better ideas I can steal?
So healthcare would do it. If pregnancy was easier on women in that period of time they would have died less and been a more viable political block.
In regular early agriculture people were mostly unhealthy alot of the time. You had a lot of women die in childbirth so you didn't get a lot of survival to be matriarchs. If we accept the neoliberal story of it all anyway. So if there were even few anachronistic healthcare advancements matriarchy could easy have survived early agriculture.
Or reduce the fertility rate. Women remain an important workforce as they were pre early agriculture and the pressure of pregnancy is lower so it doesn't hit women as hard as a political group. Suppose there is a mineral defficiency in the soil that reduced fertility. You have more women workers, and fertile women are cared for better. That would quite easily do it as well.