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Matriarchy is a social system in which positions of dominance and authority are primarily held by women. In a broader sense it can also extend to moral authority, social privilege, and control of property. While those definitions apply in general English, definitions specific to anthropology and feminism differ in some respects. Most anthropologists hold that there are no known societies that are unambiguously matriarchal.[1][2]
Matriarchies may also be confused with matrilineal, matrilocal, and matrifocal societies.[3] While some may consider any non-patriarchal system to be matriarchal, most academics exclude those systems from matriarchies as strictly defined.
Definitions, connotations, and etymology
According to the Oxford English Dictionary (OED), matriarchy is a "form of social organization in which the mother or oldest female is the head of the family, and descent and relationship are reckoned through the female line; government or rule by a woman or women."[4] A popular definition, according to James Peoples and Garrick Bailey, is "female dominance".[5] Within the academic discipline of cultural anthropology, according to the OED, matriarchy is a "culture or community in which such a system prevails"[4] or a "family, society, organization, etc., dominated by a woman or women" without reference to laws that require women to dominate.[4] In general anthropology, according to William A. Haviland, matriarchy is "rule by women".[6] A matriarchy is a society in which females, especially mothers, have the central roles of political leadership, moral authority, and control of property, but does not include a society that occasionally is led by a female for nonmatriarchal reasons or an occupation in which females generally predominate without reference to matriarchy, such as prostitution or women's auxiliaries of organizations run by men.[citation needed] According to Lawrence A. Kuzner in 1997, A. R. Radcliffe-Brown argued in 1924 that the definitions of matriarchy and patriarchy had "logical and empirical failings (...) were too vague to be scientifically useful".[7]
Most academics exclude egalitarian nonpatriarchal systems from matriarchies more strictly defined. According to Heide Göttner-Abendroth, a reluctance to accept the existence of matriarchies might be based on a specific culturally biased notion of how to define matriarchy: because in a patriarchy men rule over women, a matriarchy has frequently been conceptualized as women ruling over men,[8][9] while she believed that matriarchies are egalitarian.[8][10]
The word matriarchy, for a society politically led by females, especially mothers, who also control property, is often interpreted to mean the genderal opposite of patriarchy, but it is not an opposite.[11][12][13] According to Peoples and Bailey, the view of anthropologist Peggy Reeves Sanday is that matriarchies are not a mirror or inverted form of patriarchies but rather that a matriarchy "emphasizes maternal meanings where 'maternal symbols are linked to social practices influencing the lives of both sexes and where women play a central role in these practices'".[14] Journalist Margot Adler wrote, "literally, ... means government by mothers, or more broadly, government and power in the hands of women."[15] Barbara Love and Elizabeth Shanklin wrote, "by 'matriarchy,' we mean a non-alienated society: a society in which women, those who produce the next generation, define motherhood, determine the conditions of motherhood, and determine the environment in which the next generation is reared."[16] According to Cynthia Eller, "'matriarchy' can be thought of ... as a shorthand description for any society in which women's power is equal or superior to men's and in which the culture centers around values and life events described as 'feminine.'"[17] Eller wrote that the idea of matriarchy mainly rests on two pillars, romanticism and modern social criticism.[18] The notion of matriarchy was meant to describe something like a utopia placed in the past in order to legitimate contemporary social criticism.[citation needed] With respect to a prehistoric matriarchal Golden Age, according to Barbara Epstein, "matriarchy ... means a social system organized around matriliny and goddess worship in which women have positions of power."[19] According to Adler, in the Marxist tradition, it usually refers to a pre-class society "where women and men share equally in production and power."[20]
According to Adler, "a number of feminists note that few definitions of the word , despite its literal meaning, include any concept of power, and they suggest that centuries of oppression have made it impossible for women to conceive of themselves with such power."[20]
Matriarchy has often been presented as negative, in contrast to patriarchy as natural and inevitable for society, and thus that matriarchy is hopeless. Love and Shanklin wrote:
When we hear the word "matriarchy", we are conditioned to a number of responses: that matriarchy refers to the past and that matriarchies have never existed; that matriarchy is a hopeless fantasy of female domination, of mothers dominating children, of women being cruel to men. Conditioning us negatively to matriarchy is, of course, in the interests of patriarchs. We are made to feel that patriarchy is natural; we are less likely to question it, and less likely to direct our energies to ending it.[21]
The Matriarchal Studies school led by Göttner-Abendroth calls for an even more inclusive redefinition of the term: Göttner-Abendroth defines Modern Matriarchal Studies as the "investigation and presentation of non-patriarchal societies", effectively defining matriarchy as non-patriarchy.[22] She has also defined matriarchy as characterized by the sharing of power equally between the two genders.[23] According to Diane LeBow, "matriarchal societies are often described as ... egalitarian ...",[24] although anthropologist Ruby Rohrlich has written of "the centrality of women in an egalitarian society."[25][a]
Matriarchy is also the public formation in which the woman occupies the ruling position in a family.[4] Some, including Daniel Moynihan, claimed that there is a matriarchy among Black families in the United States,[26][b] because a quarter of them were headed by single women;[27] thus, families composing a substantial minority of a substantial minority could be enough for the latter to constitute a matriarchy within a larger non-matriarchal society with non-matriarchal political dynamics.
Etymologically, it is from Latin māter (genitive mātris), "mother" and Greek ἄρχειν arkhein, "to rule".[28] The notion of matriarchy was defined by Joseph-François Lafitau (1681–1746), who first named it ginécocratie.[29] According to the OED, the earliest known attestation of the word matriarchy is in 1885.[4] By contrast, gynæcocracy, meaning 'rule of women', has been in use since the 17th century, building on the Greek word γυναικοκρατία found in Aristotle and Plutarch.[30][31]
Terms with similar etymology are also used in various social sciences and humanities to describe matriarchal or matriological aspects of social, cultural, and political processes.[citation needed] Adjective matriological is derived from the noun matriology that comes from Latin word māter (mother) and Greek word λογος (logos, teaching about).[citation needed] The term matriology was used in theology and history of religion as a designation for the study of particular motherly aspects of various female deities.[citation needed] The term was subsequently borrowed by other social sciences and humanities and its meaning was widened in order to describe and define particular female-dominated and female-centered aspects of cultural and social life.[citation needed] The male alternative for matriology is patriology,[citation needed] with patriarchy being the male alternative to matriarchy[32][pages needed].
Related concepts
In their works, Johann Jakob Bachofen and Lewis Morgan used such terms and expressions as mother-right, female rule, gyneocracy, and female authority. All these terms meant the same: the rule by females (mother or wife).[citation needed] Although Bachofen and Lewis Morgan confined the "mother-right" inside households, it was the basis of female influence upon the whole society.[33] The authors of the classics did not think that gyneocracy meant 'female government' in politics.[citation needed] They were aware of the fact that the sexual structure of government had no relation to domestic rule and to roles of both sexes.[citation needed]
Words beginning with gyn-
A matriarchy is also sometimes called a gynarchy, a gynocracy, a gynecocracy, or a gynocentric society, although these terms do not definitionally emphasize motherhood. Cultural anthropologist Jules de Leeuwe argued that some societies were "mainly gynecocratic"[34] (others being "mainly androcratic").[34][c]
Gynecocracy, gynaecocracy, gynocracy, gyneocracy, and gynarchy generally mean 'government by women over women and men'.[35][36][37][38] All of these words are synonyms in their most important definitions, and while these words all share that principal meaning, they differ a little in their additional meanings, so that gynecocracy also means 'women's social supremacy',[39] gynaecocracy also means 'government by one woman', 'female dominance', and, derogatorily, 'petticoat government',[40] and gynocracy also means 'women as the ruling class'.[41] Gyneocracy is rarely used in modern times.[42] None of these definitions are limited to mothers.[citation needed]
Some question whether a queen ruling without a king is sufficient to constitute female government, given the amount of participation of other men in most such governments. One view is that it is sufficient. "By the end of Elizabeth's reign, gynecocracy was a fait accompli", according to historian Paula Louise Scalingi.[43][d] Gynecocracy is defined by Scalingi as "government by women",[44] similar to dictionary definitions[36][37][38] (one dictionary adding 'women's social supremacy' to the governing role).[39] Scalingi reported arguments for and against the validity of gynocracy[45] and said, "the humanists treated the question of female rule as part of the larger controversy over sexual equality."[46] Possibly, queenship, because of the power wielded by men in leadership and assisting a queen, leads to queen bee syndrome, contributing to the difficulty of other women in becoming heads of the government.[citation needed]
Some matriarchies have been described by historian Helen Diner as "a strong gynocracy"[47] and "women monopolizing government"[48] and she described matriarchal Amazons as "an extreme, feminist wing"[49][e] of humanity and that North African women "ruled the country politically" before being overthrown by forms of patriarchy[47] and, according to Adler, Diner "envision a dominance matriarchy".[50]
Gynocentrism is the 'dominant or exclusive focus on women', is opposed to androcentrism, and "invert ... the privilege of the ... binary ... arguing for 'the superiority of values embodied in traditionally female experience'".[51]
Intergenerational relationships
Some people who sought evidence for the existence of a matriarchy often mixed matriarchy with anthropological terms and concepts describing specific arrangements in the field of family relationships and the organization of family life, such as matrilineality and matrilocality. These terms refer to intergenerational relationships (as matriarchy may), but do not distinguish between males and females insofar as they apply to specific arrangements for sons as well as daughters from the perspective of their relatives on their mother's side. Accordingly, these concepts do not represent matriarchy as 'power of women over men' but instead familial dynamics.[52]
Words beginning with matri-
Anthropologists have begun to use the term matrifocality.[citation needed] There is some debate concerning the terminological delineation between matrifocality and matriarchy.[citation needed] Matrifocal societies are those in which women, especially mothers, occupy a central position.[citation needed] Anthropologist R. T. Smith refers to matrifocality as the kinship structure of a social system whereby the mothers assume structural prominence.[53] The term does not necessarily imply domination by women or mothers.[53] In addition, some authors depart from the premise of a mother-child dyad as the core of a human group where the grandmother was the central ancestor with her children and grandchildren clustered around her in an extended family.[54]
The term matricentric means 'having a mother as head of the family or household'.[citation needed]
Matristic: Feminist scholars and archeologists such as Marija Gimbutas, Gerda Lerner, and Riane Eisler[55] label their notion of a "woman-centered" society surrounding Mother Goddess worship during prehistory (in Paleolithic and Neolithic Europe) and in ancient civilizations by using the term matristic rather than matriarchal. Marija Gimbutas states that she uses "the term matristic simply to avoid the term matriarchy with the understanding that it incorporates matriliny."[56]
Matrilineality, in which descent is traced through the female line, is sometimes conflated with historical matriarchy.[57] Sanday favors redefining and reintroducing the word matriarchy, especially in reference to contemporary matrilineal societies such as the Minangkabau.[58] The 19th-century belief that matriarchal societies existed was due to the transmission of "economic and social power ... through kinship lines"[59] so that "in a matrilineal society all power would be channeled through women. Women may not have retained all power and authority in such societies ..., but they would have been in a position to control and dispense power... not unlike the nagging wife or the domineering mother."[59]
A matrilocal society defines a society in which a couple resides close to the bride's family rather than the bridegroom's family.[60][citation needed]
History and distribution
Most anthropologists hold that there are no known societies that are unambiguously matriarchal.[1][61][2] According to J. M. Adovasio, Olga Soffer, and Jake Page, no true matriarchy is known to have actually existed.[57] Anthropologist Joan Bamberger argued that the historical record contains no primary sources on any society in which women dominated.[62] Anthropologist Donald Brown's list of human cultural universals (viz., features shared by nearly all current human societies) includes men being the "dominant element" in public political affairs,[63] which he asserts is the contemporary opinion of mainstream anthropology.[64] There are some disagreements and possible exceptions. A belief that women's rule preceded men's rule was, according to Haviland, "held by many nineteenth-century intellectuals".[6] The hypothesis survived into the 20th century and was notably advanced in the context of feminism and especially second-wave feminism, but the hypothesis is mostly discredited today, most experts saying that it was never true.[64]
Matriarchs, according to Peoples and Bailey, do exist; there are "individual matriarchs of families and kin groups."[5]
By region and culture
Ancient Near East
The Cambridge Ancient History (1975)[65] stated that "the predominance of a supreme goddess is probably a reflection from the practice of matriarchy which at all times characterized Elamite civilization to a greater or lesser degree, before this practice was overthrown by the patriarchy".[f]
Europe
Tacitus claimed in his book Germania that in "the nations of the Sitones woman is the ruling sex."[66][g]
Cucuteni–Trypillia culture has been frequently discussed as a matriarchal society before its overthrow by the patriarchy,[67] including its goddess art, connecting the moon, menstrual cycles, agricultural seasons, and life and death.
Anne Helene Gjelstad describes the women on the Estonian islands Kihnu and Manija as "the last matriarchal society in Europe" because "the older women here take care of almost everything on land as their husbands travel the seas".[68] [69]
Asia
Burma
Possible matriarchies in Burma are, according to Jorgen Bisch, the Padaungs[70] and, according to Andrew Marshall, the Kayaw.[71]
China
The Mosuo culture, which is in China near Tibet, is frequently described as matriarchal.[72] The term matrilineal is sometimes used, and, while more accurate, still does not reflect the full complexity of their social organization. In fact, it is not easy to categorize Mosuo culture within traditional Western definitions. They have aspects of a matriarchal culture: women are often the head of the house, inheritance is through the female line, and women make business decisions. However, unlike in a true matriarchy, political power tends to be in the hands of males, and the current culture of the Mosuo has been heavily shaped by their minority status.[73]
India
In India, of communities recognized in the national Constitution as Scheduled Tribes, "some ... matriarchal and matrilineal"[74] "and thus have been known to be more egalitarian".[75] According to interviewer Anuj Kumar, Manipur, India, "has a matriarchal society",[76] but this may not be scholarly. In Kerala, Nairs, Thiyyas, Brahmins of Payyannoor village and Muslims of North Malabar and in Karnataka, Bunts and Billavas follow the matrilineal system.
Indonesia
Anthropologist Peggy Reeves Sanday has said that the Minangkabau society may be a matriarchy.[77]
Ancient Vietnam (before 43 CE)edit
According to William S. Turley, "the role of women in traditional Vietnamese culture was determined partly by ... indigenous customs bearing traces of matriarchy",[78] affecting "different social classes"[78] to "varying degrees".[78] Peter C. Phan explains that "the ancient Vietnamese family system was most likely matriarchal, with women ruling over the clan or tribe" until the Vietnamese "adopted ... the patriarchal system introduced by the Chinese."[79][80] That being said, even after adopting the patriarchal Chinese system, Vietnamese women, especially peasant women, still held a higher position than women in most patriarchal societies.[80][81] According to Chiricosta, the legend of Âu Cơ is said to be evidence of "the presence of an original 'matriarchy' in North Vietnam and it led to the double kinship system, which developed there .... and which combined matrilineal and patrilineal patterns of family structure and assigned equal importance to both lines."[82][h][i] Chiricosta said that other scholars relied on "this 'matriarchal' aspect of the myth to differentiate Vietnamese society from the pervasive spread of Chinese Confucian patriarchy,"[83][j] and that "resistance to China's colonization of Vietnam ... combined with the view that Vietnam was originally a matriarchy ... led to viewing women's struggles for liberation from (Chinese) patriarchy as a metaphor for the entire nation's struggle for Vietnamese independence," and therefore, a "metaphor for the struggle of the matriarchy to resist being overthrown by the patriarchy."[84] According to Keith Weller Taylor, "the matriarchal flavor of the time is ... attested by the fact that Trung Trac's mother's tomb and spirit temple have survived, although nothing remains of her father",[85] and the "society of the Trung sisters" was "strongly matrilineal".[86] According to Donald M. Seekins, an indication of "the strength of matriarchal values"[87] was that a woman, Trưng Trắc, with her younger sister Trưng Nhị, raised an army of "over 80,000 soldiers ... in which many of her officers were women",[87] with which they defeated the Chinese.[87] According to Seekins, "in the year 40, Trung Trac was proclaimed queen, and a capital was built for her"[87] and modern Vietnam considers the Trung sisters to be heroines.[87] According to Karen G. Turner, in the third century A.D., Lady Triệu "seemed ... to personify the matriarchal culture that mitigated Confucianized patriarchal norms .... although she is also painted as something of a freak ... with her ... savage, violent streak."[88]
Native Americansedit
The Hopi (in what is now the Hopi Reservation in northeastern Arizona), according to Alice Schlegel, had as its "gender ideology ... one of female superiority, and it operated within a social actuality of sexual equality."[89] According to LeBow (based on Schlegel's work), in the Hopi, "gender roles ... are egalitarian .... and neither sex is inferior."[90][k] LeBow concluded that Hopi women "participate fully in ... political decision-making."[91][l] According to Schlegel, "the Hopi no longer live as they are described here"[92] and "the attitude of female superiority is fading".[92] Schlegel said the Hopi "were and still are matrilineal"[93] and "the household ... was matrilocal".[93] Schlegel explains why there was female superiority as that the Hopi believed in "life as the highest good ... with the female principle ... activated in women and in Mother Earth ... as its source"[94] and that the Hopi had no need for an army as they did not have rivalries with neighbors.[95] Women were central to institutions of clan and household and predominated "within the economic and social systems (in contrast to male predominance within the political and ceremonial systems)."[95] The Clan Mother, for example, was empowered to overturn land distribution by men if she felt it was unfair[94] since there was no "countervailing ... strongly centralized, male-centered political structure".[94]
The Iroquois Confederacy or League, combining five to six Native American Haudenosaunee nations or tribes before the U.S. became a nation, operated by The Great Binding Law of Peace, a constitution by which women participated in the League's political decision-making, including deciding whether to proceed to war,[96] through what may have been a matriarchy[97] or gyneocracy.[98] According to Doug George-Kanentiio, in this society, mothers exercise central moral and political roles.[99] The dates of this constitution's operation are unknown; the League was formed in approximately 1000–1450, but the constitution was oral until written in about 1880.[100] The League still exists.
George-Kanentiio explains:
In our society, women are the center of all things. Nature, we believe, has given women the ability to create; therefore it is only natural that women be in positions of power to protect this function....We traced our clans through women; a child born into the world assumed the clan membership of its mother. Our young women were expected to be physically strong....The young women received formal instruction in traditional planting....Since the Iroquois were absolutely dependent upon the crops they grew, whoever controlled this vital activity wielded great power within our communities. It was our belief that since women were the givers of life they naturally regulated the feeding of our people....In all countries, real wealth stems from the control of land and its resources. Our Iroquois philosophers knew this as well as we knew natural law. To us it made sense for women to control the land since they were far more sensitive to the rhythms of the Mother Earth. We did not own the land but were custodians of it. Our women decided any and all issues involving territory, including where a community was to be built and how land was to be used....In our political system, we mandated full equality. Our leaders were selected by a caucus of women before the appointments were subject to popular review....Our traditional governments are composed of an equal number of men and women. The men are chiefs and the women clan-mothers....As leaders, the women closely monitor the actions of the men and retain the right to veto any law they deem inappropriate....Our women not only hold the reins of political and economic power, they also have the right to determine all issues involving the taking of human life. Declarations of war had to be approved by the women, while treaties of peace were subject to their deliberations.[99]
By chronologyedit
Earliest prehistory and undatededit
The controversy surrounding prehistoric or "primal" matriarchy began in reaction to the 1861 book by Bachofen, Mother Right: An Investigation of the Religious and Juridical Character of Matriarchy in the Ancient World. Several generations of ethnologists were inspired by his pseudo-evolutionary theory of archaic matriarchy. Following him and Jane Ellen Harrison, several generations of scholars, usually arguing from known myths or oral traditions and examination of Neolithic female cult-figures, suggested that many ancient societies might have been matriarchal, or even that there existed a wide-ranging matriarchal society prior to the ancient cultures of which we are aware. After Bachofen's three-volume Myth, Religion, and Mother Right, classicists such as Harrison, Arthur Evans, Walter Burkert, and James Mellaart[101] looked at the evidence of matriarchal religion in pre-Hellenic societies.[102] The concept was further investigated by Lewis Morgan.[103] According to Uwe Wesel, Bachofen's myth interpretations have proved to be untenable.[104] According to historian Susan Mann, as of 2000, "few scholars these days find ... a "notion of a stage of primal matriarchy" persuasive."[105]
Kurt Derungs is a recent non-academic author advocating an "anthropology of landscape" based on allegedly matriarchal traces in toponymy and folklore.[106]
Paleolithic and Neolithic Agesedit
Friedrich Engels, in 1884, claimed that, in the earliest stages of human social development, there was group marriage and that therefore paternity was disputable, whereas maternity was not, so that a family could be traced only through the female line. This was a materialist interpretation of Bachofen's Mutterrecht.[107][108] Engels speculated that the domestication of animals increased material wealth, which was claimed by men.[citation needed] Engels said that men wanted to control women to use as laborers and to pass on wealth to their children, requiring monogamy;[citation needed] as patriarchy rose, women's status declined until they became mere objects in the exchange trade between men, causing the global defeat of the female sex[109] and the rise of individualism and competition.[110] According to Eller, Engels may have been influenced with respect to women's status by August Bebel,[111] according to whom matriarchy naturally resulted in communism, while patriarchy was characterized by exploitation.[112]
Austrian writer Bertha Diener (or Helen Diner), wrote Mothers and Amazons (1930), the first work to focus on women's cultural history, a classic of feminist matriarchal study.[113] Her view is that all past human societies were originally matriarchal, while most later shifted to patriarchy and degenerated. The controversy intensified with The White Goddess by Robert Graves (1948) and his later analysis of classical Greek mythology, focusing on the reconstruction of earlier myths that had conjecturally been rewritten after a transition from matriarchal to patriarchal religion in very early historical times.
From the 1950s, Marija Gimbutas developed a theory of an Old European culture in Neolithic Europe with matriarchal traits, which had been replaced by the patriarchal system of the Proto-Indo-Europeans in the Bronze Age. However, other anthropologists warned that "the goddess worship or matrilocality that evidently existed in many paleolithic societies was not necessarily associated with matriarchy in the sense of women's power over men. Many societies can be found that exhibit those qualities along with female subordination."[114] According to Eller, Gimbutas had a large part in constructing a myth of historical matriarchy by examining Eastern European cultures that never really resembled the alleged universal matriarchy. She asserts that in "actually documented primitive societies" of recent (historical) times, paternity is never ignored and that the sacred status of goddesses does not automatically increase female social status, and she interprets utopian matriarchy as an invented inversion of antifeminism.[citation needed]
From the 1970s, ideas of matriarchy were taken up by popular writers of second-wave feminism such as Riane Eisler, Elizabeth Gould Davis, and Merlin Stone, and expanded with the speculations of Margaret Murray on witchcraft, by the Goddess movement, and in feminist Wicca. "A Golden Age of matriarchy" was prominently presented by Charlene Spretnak and "encouraged" by Stone and Eisler,[115] but, at least for the Neolithic Age, it has been denounced as feminist wishful thinking in works such as The Inevitability of Patriarchy, Why Men Rule, Goddess Unmasked,[116] and The Myth of Matriarchal Prehistory. The idea is not emphasized in third-wave feminism.
J.F. del Giorgio insists on a matrifocal, matrilocal, matrilineal Paleolithic society.[117]
Bronze Ageedit
 | This section needs additional citations for verification. (October 2013) |
According to Rohrlich, "many scholars are convinced that Crete was a matriarchy, ruled by a queen-priestess"[118] and the "Cretan civilization" was "matriarchal" before "1500 BC," when it was overrun and colonized by the patriarchy.[119]
Also according to Rohrlich, "in the early Sumerian city-states 'matriarchy seems to have left something more than a trace.'"[120]
One common misconception among historians of the Bronze Age such as Stone and Eisler is the notion that the Semites were matriarchal while the Indo-Europeans practiced a patriarchal system. An example of this view is found in Stone's When God Was a Woman,[page needed] wherein she makes the case that the worship of Yahweh was an Indo-European invention superimposed on an ancient matriarchal Semitic nation. Evidence from the Amorites and pre-Islamic Arabs, however, indicates that the primitive Semitic family was in fact patriarchal and patrilineal.[citation needed]
However, not all scholars agree. Anthropologist and Biblical scholar Raphael Patai writes in The Hebrew Goddess that the Jewish religion, far from being pure monotheism, contained from earliest times strong polytheistic elements, chief of which was the cult of Asherah, the mother goddess. A story in the Biblical Book of Judges places the worship of Asherah in the 12th century BC. Originally a Canaanite goddess, her worship was adopted by Hebrews who intermarried with Canaanites. She was worshipped in public and was represented by carved wooden poles. Numerous small nude female figurines of clay were found all over ancient Palestine and a seventh-century Hebrew text invokes her aid for a woman giving birth.[121]
Shekinah is the name of the feminine holy spirit who embodies both divine radiance and compassion. Exemplifying various traits associated with mothers, she comforts the sick and dejected, accompanies the Jews whenever they are exiled, and intercedes with God to exercise mercy rather than to inflict retribution on sinners. While not a creation of the Hebrew Bible, Shekinah appears in a slightly later Aramaic translation of the Bible in the first or second century C.E., according to Patai. Initially portrayed as the presence of God, she later becomes distinct from God, taking on more physical attributes.[122]
Meanwhile, the Indo-Europeans were known to have practiced multiple succession systems, and there is much better evidence of matrilineal customs among the Indo-European Celts and Germanics than among any ancient Semitic peoples.[where?]
Women ruled Sparta while the men were often away fighting, or when both kings were incapacitated or too young to rule. Gorgo, Queen of Sparta, was asked by a woman in Attica "You Spartan women are the only women that lord it over your men", to which Gorgo replied: "Yes, for we are the only women that are mothers of men!"[123]
Iron Age to Middle Agesedit
Arising in the period ranging from the Iron Age to the Middle Ages, several northwestern European mythologies from the Irish (e.g. Macha and Scáthach), the Brittonic (e.g. Rhiannon), and the Germanic (e.g. Grendel's mother and Nerthus) contain ambiguous episodes of primal female power which have been interpreted as folk evidence of matriarchal attitudes in pre-Christian European Iron Age societies. Often transcribed from a retrospective, patriarchal, Romanised, and Catholic perspective, they hint at a possible earlier era when female power predominated. The first-century historical British figure of Boudicca indicates that Brittonnic society permitted explicit female autocracy or a form of gender equality which contrasted strongly with the patriarchal Mediterranean civilisation that later overthrew it.[citation needed]
20th–21st centuriesedit
The Mosuo people are an ethnic group in southwest China. They are considered one of the most well-known matriarchal societies, although many scholars assert that they are rather matrilineal. As of 2016[update], the sole heirs in the family are still daughters.[124][125] Since 1990, when foreign tourism became permitted, tourists started visiting the Mosuo people.[124] As pointed out by the Xinhua News Agency, "tourism has become so profitable that many Mosuo families in the area who have opened their homes have become wealthy."[125] Although this revived their economy and lifted many out of poverty, it also altered the fabric of their society to have outsiders present who often look down on the Mosuo's cultural practices.[124]
In 1995, in Kenya, according to Emily Wax, Umoja, a village only for women from one tribe with about 36 residents, was established under a matriarch.[126] It was founded on an empty piece of land by women who fled their homes after being raped by British soldiers.[127] They formed a safe-haven in rural Samburu County in northern Kenya.[128] Men of the same tribe established a village nearby from which to observe the women's village,[126] the men's leader objecting to the matriarch's questioning the culture[129] and men suing to close the women's village.[129] As of 2019, 48 women, most of whom who have fled gender-based violence like female genital mutilation, assault, rape, and abusive marriages call Umoja home, living with their children in this all female-village.[127] Many of these women faced stigma in their communities following these attacks and had no choice but to flee.[128] Others sought to escape from the nearby Samburu community, which practices child marriage and female genital mutilation.[128] In the village, the women practice “collective economic cooperation.”[128] The sons are obligated to move out when they turn eighteen.[127] Not only has the Umoja village protected its members, the members have also done extensive work for gender equity in Kenya.[128] The message of the village has spread outside of Kenya as member “Lolosoli's passion for gender equity in Kenya has carried her to speak on social justice at the United Nations and to participate in an international women's rights conference in South Africa.”[128]
The Khasi people live in Northeast India in the state of Meghalaya.[130] Although largely considered matrilineal, some women's studies scholars such as Roopleena Banerjee consider the Khasi to be matriarchal.[130] Banerjee asserts that “to assess and account a matriarchal society through the parameters of the patriarchy would be wrong” and that “we should avoid looking at history only through the colonizer/colonized boundaries.”[130] The Khasi people consist of many clans who trace their lineage through the matriarchs of the families.[130] A Khasi husband typically moves into his wife's home, and both wife and husband participate equally in raising their children.[130] A Khasi woman named Passah explains that "The father would come to his wife's home late at night... In the morning, he's back at his mother's home to work in the fields,” showing how a man's role consists of supporting his wife and family in Khasi society.[131] Traditionally, the youngest daughter, called the Khadduh, receives and cares for ancestral property.[131][130] As of 2021, the Khasi continue to practice many female-led customs, with wealth and property being passed down through the female side of the family.[131]
Spokespersons for various indigenous peoples at the United Nations and elsewhere have highlighted the central role of women in their societies, referring to them as matriarchies, in danger of being overthrown by the patriarchy, or as matriarchal in character.[132][133]
Mythologyedit
Amazonsedit
A legendary matriarchy related by several writers was Amazon society. According to Phyllis Chesler, "in Amazon societies, women were ... mothers and their society's only political and religious leaders",[135] as well as the only warriors and hunters;[136] "queens were elected"[137] and apparently "any woman could aspire to and achieve full human expression."[138] Herodotus reported that the Sarmatians were descendants of Amazons and Scythians, and that their females observed their ancient maternal customs, "frequently hunting on horseback with their husbands; in war taking the field; and wearing the very same dress as the men". Moreover, said Herodotus, "no girl shall wed till she has killed a man in battle".[139] Amazons came to play a role in Roman historiography. Julius Caesar spoke of the conquest of large parts of Asia by Semiramis and the Amazons.[citation needed] Although Strabo was sceptical about their historicity, the Amazons were taken as historical throughout late Antiquity.[140] Several Church Fathers spoke of the Amazons as a real people.[citation needed] Medieval authors continued a tradition of locating the Amazons in the North, Adam of Bremen placing them at the Baltic Sea and Paulus Diaconus in the heart of Germania.[141]
Greeceedit
Robert Graves suggested that a myth displaced earlier myths that had to change when a major cultural change brought patriarchy to replace a matriarchy.[citation needed] According to this myth, in Greek mythology, Zeus is said to have swallowed his pregnant lover, the titan goddess Metis, who was carrying their daughter, Athena. The mother and child created havoc inside Zeus. Either Hermes or Hephaestus split Zeus's head, allowing Athena, in full battle armor, to burst forth from his forehead. Athena was thus described as being "born" from Zeus. The outcome pleased Zeus as it didn't fulfill the prophecy of Themis which (according to Aeschylus) predicted that Zeus will one day bear a son that would overthrow him. [citation needed]
Celtic myth and societyedit
According to Adler, "there is plenty of evidence of ancient societies where women held greater power than in many societies today. For example, Jean Markale's studies of Celtic societies show that the power of women was reflected not only in myth and legend but in legal codes pertaining to marriage, divorce, property ownership, and the right to rule...although this was overthrown by the patriarchy."[142]
Basque myth and societyedit
The hypothesis of Basque matriarchism or theory of Basque matriarchism is a theoretical proposal launched by Andrés Ortiz-Osés that maintains that the existence of a psychosocial structure centered or focused on the matriarchal-feminine archetype (mother / woman, which finds in the archetype of the great Basque mother Mari, her precipitate as a projection of Mother Earth / nature) that "permeates, coagulates and unites the traditional Basque social group in a way that is different from the patriarchal Indo-European peoples".
This mythical matriarchal conception corresponds to the conception of the Basques, clearly reflected in their mythology. The Earth is the mother of the Sun and the Moon, compared to Indo-European patriarchal conceptions, where the sun is reflected as a God, numen or male spirit. Prayers and greetings were dedicated to these two sisters at dawn and dusk, when they returned to the bosom of Mother Earth.
Franz-Karl Mayr, this philosopher argued that the archetypal background of Basque mythology had to be inscribed in the context of a Paleolithic dominated by the Great Mother, in which the cycle of Mari (goddess) and her metamorphoses offers all a typical symbolism of the matriarchal-naturalistic context. According to the archetype of the Great Mother, this is usually related to fertility cults, as in the case of Mari, who is the determinant of fertility-fecundity, the maker of rain or hail, that on whose telluric forces depend the crops, in space and time, life and death, luck (grace) and misfortune.[143]
South Americaedit
Bamberger (1974) examines several matriarchal myths from South American cultures and concludes that portraying the women from this matriarchal period as immoral often serves to restrain contemporary women in these societies, providing reason for the overthrow by the patriarchy.[clarification needed] [144]
In feminist thoughtedit
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