I'm not sure that "all societies are gynocentric." To put that another way, I suspect that all societies show signs of both gynocentrism and androcentrism. It's true that every society depends on women to gestate and lactate. And I do think that the dramatic ability of women to give birth generally leads men to envy their mysterious power (often enacted ritually by men as "couvade"). But no society could do without the equally necessary contributions of men. And every society (except ours for the last half century) has rewarded men accordingly. I suggest that this leads women to envy men.

But I doubt that envy, either way, was of paramount importance until very recently in evolutionary terms. For most of human history, by far, both sexes faced death on a routine basis: women commonly died in childbirth, after all, and men were commonly killed by predators. Historically, in short, no society could ever be unambiguously either gynocentric or androcentric. Rather, every society has been at least somewhat ambivalent, its social contract showing signs of both and thus ensuring that both sexes invest heavily but also willingly in the community's future and . Until now.