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[Neonivek]

Which is to say, what, 90+% of all human historic human societies?

Which is to say, too large and vague a set to make generalisations about with specific citations and arguments.

We actually know quite a bit about them and how they lived. As well we still have a FEW living hunter-gatherer societies in existence (Mostly sedentary)

They still followed a few general rules and these rules don't change.

[Sheb]

Source? Because from what I've heard, they had a wide variety of social organizations.

[Reelya]

I sourced it here, one of the articles I went through while doing some fact-checking in the last page of this thread:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/freedom-learn/201105/how-hunter-gatherers-maintained-their-egalitarian-ways

During the twentieth century, anthropologists discovered and studied dozens of different hunter-gatherer societies, in various remote parts of the world, who had been nearly untouched by modern influences. Wherever they were found--in Africa, Asia, South America, or elsewhere; in deserts or in jungles--these societies had many characteristics in common. The people lived in small bands, of about 20 to 50 persons (including children) per band, who moved from camp to camp within a relatively circumscribed area to follow the available game and edible vegetation. The people had friends and relatives in neighboring bands and maintained peaceful relationships with neighboring bands. Warfare was unknown to most of these societies, and where it was known it was the result of interactions with warlike groups of people who were not hunter-gatherers. In each of these societies, the dominant cultural ethos was one that emphasized individual autonomy, non-directive childrearing methods, nonviolence, sharing, cooperation, and consensual decision-making. Their core value, which underlay all of the rest, was that of the equality of individuals.

The article does also reflect that people tend to conflate hunter gatherers with primitive farming societies (who also hunt and gather, but it's not their sole food source), and that's where part of the confusion comes in. Things vary much more when you look at neolithic farming societies.

Though, this was in relation to the idea of gender-roles differing in these societies compared to agricultural societies, so lets try and keep it relevant to the thread as much as possible.

I'll just write HG for "hunter gatherer" from now on.

My point, was that anthropologists note many traits of pure HG societies that seem to be near-universal. It can then be argued that those are necessary traits to survive as HGs, because alternate and quite possible styles of organization just don't exist, even in very remote communities, whether or not they're in direct competition with other groups.

So we can't really say anything about whether men or women are better decision-makers from such examples. There could have been HG tribes where men made the majority of decisions and ones where women made the majority of decisions, and either could have been better or worse. All we know is that those hypothetical tribes didn't survive, and the "equal decision making" ones did.

So it's not, on it's face, any sort of proof that "women would make better leaders than men" in an advanced technical civilization. At best it's states that things should be 50/50.