Why are women seen as less-than across cultures?

I was watching a video about the youngest person to visit every country in the world ("Lexie Limitless") share some of the creepiest stories in her travels. In it, she said, "Unfortunately, one thing that basically every country has in common is the harassment and mistreatment of women."

I trust her more than me that this is a relatively universal phenomenon, in that I have not been to every country in the world, so do not have as wide of a survey as she does. Surely, there are cultures in which there is more equality or where women are seen as higher than men, but from how Lexie was making it sound, at least, that's the exception rather than the rule.

This makes me wonder if there is some inherent Reality where women are seen as subordinate to men. If the patriarchy is 'merely' a cultural construction, I would expect it to not be relatively evenly split as to whether men or women are seen as subordinate. Yet, that does not seem to be the case.

As for the exceptions where there are such cultures, my explanation would be to say that nothing is truly universal, and the existence of exceptions (as long as they are truly exceptions, and not numerous enough that they are no longer really exceptions) does not disprove the rule.

I should also make it clear, how incredibly disturbed I am by this thought process. That doesn't come across nearly well enough in writing this, which I apologise for. And even if this is a generally-universal reality, this does not mean that it *should* be the reality, or that we shouldn't work to fix it. Just curious as to why it seems like it is a reality.