I can't resist the bait here. CB will probably provide some anthropological perspective, but here's my take, based on the historical and cross-cultural evidence that I'm aware of:
1. Truly matriarchal societies (women as the politically, economically, socially dominant group) have not existed or are extremely rare, as Chris argues.
2. The intensity of gender stratification varies dramatically in different societies. In some societies, women have virtually no political or economic power; in other societies, women as a group have more or less the same political and economic standing that men do. To simplify: gender stratification is most intense in agrarian societies, least severe in hunting and gathering societies.
Given these data, any argument about gender stratification that points to "very broad reasons" for male domination must be wrong. If it were true that (say) the structure of human reproductive biology or Joanna's "fear of women" was the primary cause of patriarchy, we wouldn't see the dramatic differences in gender stratification that we have observed in different societies.
So what explains the differing levels of gender stratification in different societies, if it cannot be simply explained in terms of general psychological or biological differences? We have to analyze the social relations in a given society--the means of production, ideological apparatuses like religion and education, family structure--to understand gender oppression. Engels (and later socialist feminists!) made a start at this kind of useful analysis.
Miles