"it seems when you explain your position the focus on economics downplays the violent establishment of inequality that gives rise to separate classes and the residual fear of that violence which helps to sustain inequality"
That's certainly possible, it is something that Marxism is often accused of, a sort of reductionism where economics becomes the be all and end all.
I'm now reading Engles (decided I must finally read this from beginning to end) He quotes Marx as saying "The modern family contains in embryo not only slavery but serfdom also, since the very beginning it is connected with agricultural services. It contains within itself in miniature all the antagonisms which later develop on a wide scale within society and its state"
So it seems that Marx acknowledged (as do I) that family is both the catalyst and a reflection of hierarchy within society. It perpetuates and mimics the class dynamics within society.
From my understanding lots of anthropologists and historians including many feminists still argue about what came first. From my understanding very early society had forms of group marriage and were matriarchal. It seems that at this time there was no slavery either because human labour didn't create surpluses.
Greater individual wealth through the development of agriculture seems to be the point at which things change, with surplus came questions about progeny. Slavery and changes to the sexual relations came about with the overthrow of "mother right"
Introduction of the pairing family and the need for monogamy along with women's labour being marginalised from "socially productive" to "reproductive" seems to be the point at which women become valued ONLY as vessels, to be traded, owned, seized and enslaved, because only with agricultural surplus can human labour create yet more surplus. No one would have kept a slave be they female or male unless they could be kept alive to work/toil/ or breed. They would only be useful if they produced a surplus be that food or indeed people. So there is a link again btw production and reproduction, as production changes so does the relationship btw men and women engaged in reproduction.
Gerder Lerner proposed that sex class came about before social class. I agree but I do believe that the relations btw men and women changed for material reasons not because of some biological determinant that makes men violent. The violence comes later, in order to maintain the social/material power and extend this.