It makes me want to read a good article on the different legal positions of women in Japanese and UK society around the period 1800ish - 1920ish. I can see it's very obviously swings and roundabouts, with certain classes of women benefiting in certain ways and losing in others rather than either being obviously 'better' all round, but the differences are striking in two societies that share a certain rigidity in their being very much a proper way to do things, but what those ways are can be very different.