Exactly what it says on the tin. I keep seeing articles like this one and any number of angry male bloggers/redditors who insist that this is totally 100% accurate and reflects some kind of anti-male bias throughout all of history and all societies, that reproduction has always favored women and that society has always been set up to let women reproduce while deliberately depriving many men of the ability to pass on their genes. How true is this assertion, and the (to me) extremely credibility-straining extrapolations which these people are getting from it?
There's quite a lot wrong with that, and the problems span across several different fields of study.
I am more familiar with the science so I guess I'll start there. This is the paper that the psychologist in your article is referencing.
All males get their Y chromosome from their dad, and everyone gets (almost all of) their mitochondria from their mom.
People have different genetics, but not that different. If you know the average rate of mutation you can ask questions like "If there was one single person with the original Y chromosome, and given the average rate of mutation and the amount of diversity we see today, how long ago would he have lived?"
We call this hypothetical person Y-chromosomal Adam. We can do the same thing for mitochondrial DNA and say when mitochondrial Eve would have lived.
The paper says that Eve was significantly further back in time than Adam (keep in mind that these names are statistical constructs, not necessarily real people) and that the data is best explained by a larger female population size that generates more diversity and makes convergence take longer.
This could be reasonably read as there having been more reproductively successful (if you fail to reproduce then you don't count) females than males throughout history.
This conclusion is from 2004 though. Science has since found more Y-chromosomal diversity, leading to estimates where Adam and Eve would have been around at roughly the same time.
So the scientific part is wrong, or at least dated.
Historically, women often did not have a choice. Forced marriage and bride price appeared across many, many cultures. Speaking of genetics, this is absolutely fascinating. Among Mestizos, almost everyone has Native American mitochondria and more than half have European Y chromosomes.
Really think about those ratios and how they might be achieved. Differential reproductive success could be explained as the arrival of another population of males which is either considered much more attractive (somewhat implausible as the sole explanation), or capable of forcibly displacing the local males. The conquest of Mexico was probably not a feminist conspiracy.
This is an odd argument because it really isn't historical. That is to say that there is no historical investigation going on in the blog or the source talk. Instead it is a lot of speculation about past human activities based largely in some interesting scientific studies. To test the claim historically we could analyze specific local populations to try and determine how many men and women in a particular community procreated. For example, parish records might help. The biggest problem historically is that prior to DNA testing, paternity can only be ascribed and never proven. So making claim about how many 'fathers' were actually the genetic fathers of a child is tough using historical evidence.
Also, from a historical perspective the arguement make some odd assumptions. For one, men going out and exploring does not mean they don't procreate - they might not procreate with the women of their home community but they sure can procreate with women in other areas. This omission completely precludes the gene flows caused by human migration as well as overlooks the long history of sexual violence (rape) in human conquest. It also makes an odd assumption that although not all men pass on genes through sexual reproduction, each woman only procreates with one man. Historically, there is ample evidence that extra-martial unions are shockingly common. Much of the problem can be resolved by recognizing that men and women are rarely monogamous even within marriages and sexual relationships that produce children can occur in a variety of contexts, even if those are considered immoral, illicit, or undesirable.
Additionally, the argument tries to blame human gender dynamics on an omnipresent 'culture' that pushes men to behave in one way and women in another and removes the possibility that as rational creatures humans can assess their practices and change their culture (which we frequently do). The logic of the argument uses this view of culture to normalize a patriarchal society and, in fact, argue that women are perfectly fine being bound by social structures that limit their positions, disenfranchises them, and discriminates against their gender. But according to the argument this is okay because 'culture' has set up this situation so we should just accept culture.
Finally, it proposes that it is okay for women to have second-class positions because they have a greater chance of passing on their genes so their greater genetic legacy makes up for inequality in society.