Ancient Goddess utopia?

There's been more than a little propogando to the effect that goddess worship was empowering for women and produced more equal societies. Was that really the case? It's hard to avoid the evidence that goddess worship went hand in hand with male dominent social structures, as Matt Stone observes:

...even in the ancient goddess archetypes of Pagan fertility cults we find implicit patriarchy. This calls into question many of the Gnostic vs. Christian and Pagan vs. Christian dichotomies we hear bandied around these days.
To my mind, rather than engaging in retro-romanticism we need to take a long, hard look at all ancient cultures, monotheistic, pantheistic and polytheistic all included, and concede we probably wouldn’t want to live in any of them.
With that in perspective, consider that Jesus ... got crucified for his troubles, at the hands of both Polytheists and Monotheists.

Eclectic Itchings: Were Ancient Goddesses So Liberated?:
Filed in: gnostic, feminine, culture, religion, spirituality