This is an interesting question. It is true that Minoan (and for that matter, Mycenaean) art often depicts women prominently. Whether this makes them "less patriarchal" than historical Greek societies is difficult to determine: later Greek art also features women prominently, and their societies had priestesses who were powerful. Things are also complicated by the continued influence of Arthur Evans' reconstruction of Minoan Crete as a Mother Goddess-worshipping matriarchy,^1 which he wrote under the influence of James Frazer's The Golden Bough.^2 Neither work is adhered to today,^3 but there is a "ghost" of seeing Minoan gender relations as somehow different and special.

There is also the question of power and rule in Minoan societies. It is often commented that there is little in Minoan or Mycenaean art obviously depicting rulers, compared to Egypt and Western Asia in the same period.^4 The untranslated nature of the Linear A documents also gives us little to go on in that regard.

Something that might shed some light on the situation is the translated Linear B texts from the "Mycenaeanised" Crete of c.1400-1200 BC. At Knossos, non-priestly elite women are recorded who owned land and controlled foodstuffs, slaves, livestock, textiles and luxury goods. These women are also recorded in the documents in a manner analogous to how male landowners are treated. This is slightly different to the situation at Pylos on the Greek mainland in the same period, where only priestly women are shown exercising economic control, and even that is at a reduced level compared to Crete.^5

To summarise, while comparative assessments of how partriarchal a society is can be difficult, it does seem to be the case that gender relations in the ancient Aegean varied across time and space. Elite Minoan and Mycenaean women seem to have possessed more power than their Classical counterparts, and even in the Mycenaean period, elite women at Knossos seem to have had more power than their counterparts at Pylos on the mainland.

^1 Evans (1921-1935) The Palace of Minos.

^2 Frazer (1890) The Golden Bough: A Study in Comparative Religion.

^3 Talalay (1994) "A Feminist Boomerang: The Great Goddess of Greek Prehistory", Gender and History 6.

^4 Davis (1995) "Art and Politics in the Aegean: The Missing Ruler", in The Role of the Ruler in the Prehistoric Aegean.

^5 Olsen (2009) "Was there Unity in Mycenaean Gender Practices? The Women of Pylos and Knossos in the Linear B Tablets", in FYLO: Engendering prehistoric ‘stratigraphies’ in the Aegean and the Mediterranean.