It’s not that women didn’t select their own mates:
… (a) parents had the spectrum: control > veto > influence;
… (b) dependent upon the age at marriage, with parental influence declining the later the age of marriage
… (c) insurance was provided by the family, and income (self insurance) harder to come by. So the family had an interest in the success of the marriage.
… (d) adult death was common, and children without a father or mother put pressure on the family network to feed children in eras where productivity had not been industrialized, and food was always scarce, and a lot of work to produce (which is why women killed so many children)
… (e) property was often transferred and it was of such value that it had to be restorable to the family.
One of The Big Lies, is that traditions are arbitrary rather than of economic necessity in the context in which they are practiced.
These ‘big lies’ are the feminine means of psychologizing and moralizing that which is fact, so that they can undermine by fomenting conflcit between people who are ignorant, rather than argue the facts of reality.