Why Do Feminists Keep Claiming Women Lack Agency?

It's too common anymore to think it's anything but intentional: a feminist sees an outcome in the world she doesn't like, and then blames this state of affairs on men, i.e. the patriarchy. Differences in the numbers of men and women in STEM fields? Didn't get the job she wanted? Must be men. Income inequality between spouses? Men again (never mind that women have demonstrably higher income standards than readily exist in the real world).

So now Ellen Lamont in The Atlantic has discovered (again) that the New Feminist Woman has largely not arrived on the scene. Surprise, surprise: women want men to pay for things, among other unapproved behavior (emboldening mine):

And yet in a throwback to an earlier era, many women I spoke with enacted strict dating rules. “It’s a deal breaker if a man doesn’t pay for a date,” one woman, aged 29, told me. A 31-year-old said that if a man doesn’t pay, “they just probably don’t like you very much.” A lot of men, they assumed, were looking for nothing more than a quick hookup, so some of these dating rituals were tests to see whether the man was truly interested in a commitment. A third woman, also 31, told me, “I feel like men need to feel like they are in control, and if you ask them out, you end up looking desperate and it’s a turnoff to them.”

On dates, the women talked about acting demure, and allowing men to do more of the talking. Women, they said, were more attractive to men when they appeared unattainable, so women preferred for the men to follow up after a date. None of the women considered proposing marriage; that was the man’s job. “I know it feels counterintuitive … I’m a feminist,” the first woman said. “But I like to have a guy be chivalrous.”

As ever, the problem with such articles is the lack of actual data rather than anecdotes. Yet finally, we are talking about women's choices as much as men's. Do they not matter? Are we talking about equal outcomes or equal opportunities?