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I came across a sentence I don't understand. The essay it's from has a feminist theme about the roles of women in Japan. It's the second sentence below:
それは尊敬すべき努力ですが、主婦はすべてそうするべきだというのには、賛成できません。 男が時代の進歩を理解しないのを、そのままにしているからです。
What I'm guessing is "That's because women keep the status quo of men failing to grasp the social progress of time."
What is the exact meaning of そのままにする, and what is the role of its object marked by を? Who is the subject performing the action of そのままにする in that sentence?
まま means something to the effect of 'the way something is', and so そのまま is 'the way that it/that is', sometimes better as 'the way it/that already is'. XをYにする means 'make X Y' (or 'put X at/on/in Y', but not here), but Xをそのままにする translates better to 'leave/keep X the way it is'.
It seems like the subject of the sentence is neither men nor women, but the state of women having to work hard. You could loosely translate those two sentences together into one English sentence as something like this: 'Their hard work deserves praise, but I can't say that all women ought to do the same; since that would allow men to continue ignoring the progress of the times.'
