The answer to this question is inobvious but simple.
Nature created men to be the more powerful gender. They are bigger and physically stronger and in nature that is ultimately what counts when it comes to having power.
Men have always dominated women since the dawn of the human race and as long as they continue to be the physically dominant of the two genders they always will.
That's why you hear generation after generation of women lamenting that they are "forced" to be the submissive gender and it isn't fair. But nothing ever changes and they can't understand why.
The flaw in their view is that nature has no concept of "fairness." It's irrelevant to nature whether it is "fair" that bigger animals prey on smaller ones. Nature is concerned with things like ensuring survival of a species, maximum reproduction and such. "Fair" is not a natural objective. So those who view everything with an eye towards things like "gender justice," or "diversity, equity and inclusion" for that matter are deluding themselves into thinking that they can defy nature and millions of years of evolution. They (rather humorously) think that they are somehow able to escape their natural design that is coded into human DNA. It's a nice fantasy, but it will never work.
So men "own" women in a very close to precise definition of the term. They dominate them. They are ultimately in control of them. They have the power over them. So it has always been and so it will always be unless evolution (many many many tens of thousands of years in the future at least... if ever) changes our natural design.
