I’ll never understand why people think gender specific roles = inequality/devaluation. At least in Mesoamérica, women were always honored yet natives had gender specific roles even down to religious rituals. Women were sent to temples for education, natives literally worshipped

female deities. Femininity and masculinity were sacred and complementary. Women were essential to family and community and femininity was always associated with life. The distinct roles between men and women were both valued. Women were healers and priestesses.

Europeans thought native women were just “breeders” in the background the way they themselves viewed their own wives but this wasn’t the case among natives at least. Women were essential to society and to life. They had their own rights to property and inheritance.

Before the 70s, these roles were not interpreted to be oppressive it was only when feminists reinterpreted classical works on mesoamerican women to highlight “subordination” etc. Men literally were sent off to war and died for their families yet that was never seen as oppression

Painting all cultures with gender specific roles as “oppressive” is extremely Eurocentric. Europeans did not value their women, that wasn’t the case for every other patriarchal culture and even matriarchal societies still had gender specific roles.

& yes many tribes allowed women to take on roles that weren’t traditionally for women but it’s really not the same, tribes w “two spirit” concepts isn’t just a “trans person” it’s someone brought up fulfilling either both roles or roles opposite to their gender it’s much deeper