Not entirely sure how to feel about this one, but I should point out that I listened to the audiobook and this likely affected my feelings towards the book somewhat. The narrator would, at random, start raising the volume and intensity of her voice, and that made it a hard listen at times. It was quite shouty.

There's some fascinating information within this book and its scope is crazy, we go from prehistory all the way to the 2020s, exploring many different cultures and the patriarchies (or not) within them. In that respect, I learned a lot. But I'm just not convinced of Saini's few actual arguments. Near the beginning of the book she states that women's oppression was not borne out of their biological ability to have children, but then goes on to talk about how women's oppression didn't start in the home—it started when the very first empires needed to expand their population. So... the fact that women had the biological ability to have children is the main and perhaps only factor in their subjugation here. Glad we cleared that one up?

Further, she says that there’s no substantive evidence that women were the first oppressed class. Her reasoning for this is that women’s oppression wasn’t the same everywhere, which has no bearing on that at all. If women were the first oppressed class, even if only in one area, that still makes them the first oppressed class. 

The book works when Saini presents factual evidence of patriarchy and its varied history, but her opinions on patriarchy lack coherence.