It's society or women, Abby! That's why he went outside in his book, and feminist scholars "stayed indoors" to study women. Women are like vampires. Sunlight kills us.

...Actually, you run into this a lot with male historians of his generation (Millenium was published in 1978). Joan Scott's essay "Gender: A Useful Category of. Historical Analysis" was published fifteen years ago (I think? Pretty sure that's right) and she mentions that male colleagues have told her that history about women doesn't add anything to their understanding. They know that women were involved in the French Revolution, they don't need to know how.