Women aren't not in Congress bc they believe men are better suited. They aren't there bc of blatant double standards and discrimination, as I already pointed out (and should be patently obvious). Unfortunately, we live in one of THE most deeply patriarchal cultures in the world - one where a lot of women have internalized misogyny and a deep desire to fit into their screwed up families and communities by going along with their own marginalization. Some don't know any better; it's all they've ever heard their entire lives, and some give it lip-service so as not to have to pay the price for bucking the system (and then go get safe abortions for themselves while condeming it for others). White women vote for their men's interests rather than their own unlike any other demographic of women. Like I said, they believe it keeps them power adjacent and they probably don't believe they can ever have real power so it's the best they can hope for. But even then, it’s only some women. Unfortunately, things like gerrymandering, the Electoral College, and money as speech give people with minority views the power to nonetheless enforce them.
But, even if the ERA were ever passed, that's no guarantee of real equality. As previously noted, women have to continuously sue to have their legal rights upheld all the frickin time as it is. There's been HUGE backlash to equality and progress in the past 10 years alone, and yes women participated in that, but they didn't create the Manosphere or the rise of incel murder sprees. Men did that.
People who worship Trump want to see the 1950s reinstated - a time when white men dominated absolutely everything and everyone else "knew their place." As noted before, some white women are brainwashed to accept that and some just want to be seen as culturally superior to brown people so they are willing to be power adjacent. The brown people who love him have similar cultural and religious views and are sick of what they feel is leftist elitism.
Patriarchy is more than just a gender power differential; it's an entire system of social stratification maintained by coercion, intimidation, and restricting access to opportunity. We need to move away from that sort of dominance hierarchy system for all our sakes, but when we live in a world where people are literally willing to forcibly overthrow the government to maintain it, it's not going to be an easy transition.
The social dynamics only began to change as greater personal property that came with a larger reliance on agriculture began to be a factor. Combine this with a wave of natural disasters and incursions from more warlike Proto-Indo-European tribes, and a new more stratified type of social organization arises. This included not only a gendered power differential but a whole new class system where none had existed before.
