Was it the government's fault that women were treated the way they were in the 1800s?

In my opinion, it was not the fault of the government.  Instead, it was the fault of society.

Government can generally not force people to hold a given set of beliefs against their will.  In fact, it is very hard for them to force people to even act as if they held those beliefs.  So what I am saying is that it would have been very hard for the government to force people to treat women badly.  This is something that people did due to prejudices that they already held.

When a group is denied its rights, it is generally because the population in general does not want that group to have those rights.  It is not because the government wants to oppress those people against the will of the general population.

So I would argue that women were treated badly because people generally thought that women were inferior, not because of anything the government did.