In fact it's a theory from
Françoise Heritier, a french searcher. But she said lot of bulls.
http://www.lemonde.fr/societe/article/2017/11/05/francoise-heritier-j-ai-toujours-dit-a-mes-etudiantes-osez-foncez_5210397_3224.html#C5LMjyhk5qM6fyyV.99 here especially, according to some reviews she is saying that male violence against female don't exist toward animal species except some as ducks. So most comments are criticizing this point.
And Arte (french-german channel) made a documentary about this theory.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fran%C3%A7oise_H%C3%A9ritier The english page is not very interesting, but if someone is interested I can translate the french page which explain her theory. In some words she said that women's nutrition has been subject to prohibitions and it affected their body developement in addition with a genetical selection for short women and tall men. Also as men were the only hunters meat was consumed directly (no means of preservation), so women didn't have any access to meat from Prehistory and archaic period while they need it "more than men" (according to the Arte documentary).
But according to this theory, and as western women have a similar access to proteines as male they should be as tall as men in several generations if the way of life stay the same (unfortunely it will be in many generations, so actually it's just a theory).
She also said that "il n'y a aucune raison objective, biologique, naturelle qui impliquerait une infériorité féminine et une supériorité masculine. Les deux sexes sont différents mais la nature ne dit rien en terme de hiérarchie" -(
there is no objective, biological, natural reason that would imply female inferiority and male superiority.The two sexes are different but nature says nothing in terms of hierarchy).