Graeber / Wengrow, in endnote (574)
"Women [in Mesopotamia] were citizens and owned land. Some of the earliest stone monuments from anywhere in Mesopotamia record transactions between male and female owners, who appear as legal parties on an equal footing. Women also held high rank in temples, and female royals trained as scribes. If their husbands fell into debt they could become acting heads of households. Women also formed the backbone of Mesopotamia's prolific textile industry, which financed its foreign trade ventures. They worked in temples or other large institutions, often under the supervision of other women, who received land allotments in similar proportions to men. Some women were independent financial operators, issuing credit to other women" (see citations 574)
"Even the most autocratic rules of later city-states were answerable to a panoply of town councils, neighborhood wards and assemblies--in all of which women often participated alongside men" (300)
the Great Court at Uruk is "considerably larger" than the Pynx of Athens, even though the population of Athens is (almost certainly) much smaller
this discrepancy is plausibly because classical Athens excluded women completely, whereas Uruk likely did not
Athen also defined "some 30 per cent of its population as resident aliens with no voting rights, and up to 40 per cent as slaves"