I suspect she started out with the thesis that women who don't work, do unpaid community service, raise children, try to look attractive, etc, are "oppressed", and it has nothing to do with table seating. But they really aren't. She mentions women foraging for tubers as a contrast, but, eh... In some traditional societies, the women do all the work, and the men spend their time in lazy indolence or in fighting with each other. Those are the women who are oppressed. And they don't get to be "empowered" somehow in the bargain.

There's always a mix of both contempt and jealousy in these kinds of articles.