patriarchy

Traditional patriarchy is perpetuated by women as well as by men: both in the divide-and-conquer sense where women compete for male favour and in the sense that mothers raise their sons to rule and their daughters to serve; and in the double standard where "boys will be boys" and "sow wild oats" but girls are expected to remain chaste.

That's absolutely normal and expected in a community where power and advantage flows through male veins: to get ahead within the system, you must uphold it.

And yes, I'd say there are huge cultural differences amongst countries, but also "the past is another country". Exceptional individual women have always been able to go far outside traditional boundaries in almost any society. In limited ways (ie. in the law books) some communist countries were for a long time far more progressive than the USA, and but becoming ex-communist those countries have probably also become somewhat ex-progressive. Once again, this is normal and expected.

However there is probably no place in the world where the whole society continues to operate on purely patriarchal principles, nor anywhere sexism has actually been eradicated. The latter is probably not really possible.

The microcosm of the female-dominated workplace in your anecdotes is interesting, but it in no way contradicts the notion that it is men who benefit from historical male privilege and from ongoing sexism along traditional lines. Any place where female subordinates compete sexually for the favour of a male boss (however well-behaved) remains utterly patriarchal.

Womens' spaces exist wherein the privilege is deliberately reversed -- but they are few and far between, and justified on precisely the grounds that male privilege remains strong in society at large.