For the purpose of this debate, LadyLand is an alternate reality in Bengal in 1905.
The newly crowned young Queen, largely a figurehead under a male Prime Minister, abolished child marriage and established education for all despite women being confined to strict purdah and gender segregation. Women's universities developed scientific, ecological, and sustainable technology and research, while men's institutions developed the military.
When the Great War broke out, the male-led military failed catastrophically, relying on violence and conventional warfare, while the women's universities devised a scientific strategy that won the war through ingenuity. The remaining, heavily outnumbered men consensually submitted to women's authority, establishing a matriarchal state.
110 years later, LadyLand is a prosperous matriarchal society. Men and women have equal access to education, employment and formal civic rights, but women remain the political and economic majority. Men are predominantly domestic and caregiving, while some balance careers with domestic duties. Having been raised entirely within the matriarchal system, men no longer hold the patriarchal norms of the old order.
The Night Law, inherited from the early years of the matriarchal state, prohibits boys and men from being in public after sunset, in response to the violence and insecurity associated with the old male order.
A growing movement of citizens now demands its abolition, arguing that LadyLand should move beyond inherited gender hierarchies toward a gender-egalitarian society.