Matriarchy is a social system in which positions of power and privilege 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 respect.
Matriarchies may also be confused with matrilineal, matrilocal, and matrifocal societies.Women at the Center: Life in a Modern Matriarchy, Cornell University Press, 2002. While some may consider any non-patriarchal system to be matriarchal, most academics exclude those systems from matriarchies as strictly defined. Many societies have had matriarchal elements.
Definitions The common definition of matriarchy is rule by women who hold a monopoly or near monopoly on power and dominate society. Historian Helen Diner describes matriarchies as "women monopolizing government." She described matriarchal Amazons as "an extreme, feminist wing" of humanity and that North African women "ruled the country politically" before being overthrown by forms of patriarchy and, according to Margot Adler, Diner "envision[ed] a dominance matriarchy." Other similar definitions focus on mothers, rather than women, governing and dominating society.Haviland, William A., Anthropology (Ft. Worth: Harcourt Brace College Publishers, 8th ed. 1997 ()), p. 579. (italics so in original)Oxford English Dictionary (online), entry matriarchy, as accessed November 3, 2013. Etymologically, the word matriarchy is from Latin māter (genitive mātris), "mother" and Greek ἄρχειν arkhein, "to rule".
According to Heide Göttner-Abendroth, the reluctance to accept the existence of matriarchies is based on a biased understanding of matriarchy informed by living within a patriarchal society. Since in a patriarchy men rule over women, it is assumed that a matriarchy would be women ruling over men. Instead, supporters of an alternative definition argue that matriarchies are societies led by women, especially mothers, who have significant say over political and economic decisionsCompare, in Oxford English Dictionary (online), entry patriarchy to entry matriarchy, both as accessed November 3, 2013. while still being generally egalitarian.Lepowsky, M. A., Fruit of the Motherland: Gender in an Egalitarian Society (U.S.: Columbia University Press, 1993). (p. 184 n. 84 probably citing Spretnak, Charlene, ed., Politics of Women's Spirituality: Essays on the Rise of Spiritual Power Within the Feminist Movement (Garden City, New York: Anchor Books, 1982), p. xiii (Spretnak, Charlene, Introduction)). 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."
Supporters of an egalitarian definition of matriarchy argue that they emphasise life and femininity, using maternal values, practices, rituals and symbols where women play a central role. According to Barbara Love and Elizabeth Shanklin matriarchies are socially inclusive societies where women create the next generation, define motherhood and shape society for rearing children. Women have positions of power in matriarchal societies and they are organised around goddess worship and matriliny. Eller wrote that the idea of matriarchy mainly rests on two pillars, romanticism and modern social criticism.
Many people on both sides of the debate have argued that proposed definitions of matriarchy are too vague to be useful.Kuznar, Lawrence A., Reclaiming a Scientific Anthropology (Walnut Creek, Calif.: AltaMira Press (div. of Sage Publications), pbk. 1997 ()). For example, Göttner-Abendroth argues that, "...these older theories are characterized...by a lack of a clear, scientifically based definition...The result is the illogical, emotionally-charged baggage..." The Modern Matriarchal Studies school, led by Göttner-Abendroth, calls for what she considers a more scientific redefinition of a matriarchal society. She splits her definition into four dimensions. Her definition states that the society is run in accordance with matriliny, matrilocality and matrifocality, often using clans. The political dimension is run by consensus-based decision-making. The economic sphere is a gift economy run primarily by women. Finally, the religious dimension involves a focus on rebirth/reincarnation, with the divine feminine being ultimate. Göttner-Abendroth emphasises that "...gender equality prevails, expressed in the principle of consensus..." and "...that all sexes have equal value and each has its own sphere of activity."
Conflated concepts
Many people often conflate matriarchy with various terms. These terms describe types of familial organisation or alternative political ideologies. For example, various similar terms such as gynecocracy, gynocracy, gynaecocracy, gyneocracy, and gynarchy, all refer to the rule of women over men.Webster's Third New International Dictionary of the English Language Unabridged (G. & C. Merriam (Merriam-Webster), 1966), entries gynecocracy, gynocracy, & gynarchy.The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (Boston, Mass.: Houghton Mifflin, 3d ed. 1992 ()), entries gynecocracy, gynocracy, & gynarchy.Random House Webster's Unabridged Dictionary (N.Y.: Random House, 2d ed. 2001 ()), entries gynecocracy & gynarchy. The term Matriology, which is from Latin word māter (mother) and Greek word λογος (logos, teaching about) is used in theology and the history of religion as a designation for the study of the motherly aspects of various female deities and femininity. Matrilineality (often called Matriliny), which is a system where descent, identity, inheritance or property are passed down through female lineages.Adovasio, J. M., Olga Soffer, & Jake Page, The Invisible Sex: Uncovering the True Roles of Women in Prehistory (Smithsonian Books & Collins (HarperCollinsPublishers), 1st Smithsonian Books ed. 2007 ()), pp. 251–255, esp. p. 255.Ferraro, Gary, Wenda Trevathan, & Janet Levy, Anthropology: An Applied Perspective (Minneapolis: West Publishing Co., 1992), p. 360. Matrilocality which is when married couples live close to the wife's family rather than the husband's. Matrifocality, which refers to a household or family being primarily led by women.
Terms such as matristic and matricentric convey similar ideas. The term matricentric means 'having a mother as head of the family or household.' Various scholars such as Marija Gimbutas, Gerda Lerner, and Riane EislerEisler, Riane, The Chalice and the Blade, as cited at the author's website , as accessed Jan. 26, 2011. describe their hypothesis of goddess-worshipping women-centred societies in prehistoric Europe and other ancient civilisations 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."
History and distribution
Most anthropologists, who follow the female dominance definition of matriarchy, argue that there are no known societies that are clearly matriarchal. Meaning there are no documented societies that have completely excluded men from roles of authority. Encyclopædia Britannica describes this view as "consensus", listing matriarchy as a hypothetical social system: Encyclopædia Britannica (2007), entry Matriarchy. 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,Brown, Donald E., Human Universals (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1991), p. 137. which he asserts is the contemporary opinion of mainstream anthropology."The view of matriarchy as constituting a stage of cultural development now is generally discredited. Furthermore, the consensus among modern anthropologists and sociologists is that a strictly matriarchal society never existed." Encyclopædia Britannica (2007), entry Matriarchy.
A belief that women's rule preceded men's rule was held by many nineteenth-century intellectuals such as Bachofen. The hypothesis has since continued in the context of feminism and especially second-wave feminism.
By region
Americas
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.Bamberger, Joan, The Myth of Matriarchy: Why Men Rule in Primitive Society, in M. Rosaldo & L. Lamphere, Women, Culture, and Society (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1974), p. 279. Spokespersons for various indigenous peoples at the United Nations, 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.Tamang, Stella, Indigenous Affairs, vols. 1–2, no. 4, p. 46.Six Nations Women's Traditional Council Fire Report to CEDAW, p. 2.
Old Europe Robert Graves in his book "The Greek Myths" (1955) controversially argued that many of those mythic stories derive from a time when European matriarchy and female-dominated religion was being resisted and eventually overthrown by patriarchal systems and beliefs.
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." 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.
Folklore 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 remaining matriarchal attitudes in Iron Age European 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.
Robert Graves suggested that many myths displaced earlier myths that had to change when a major cultural change brought patriarchy to replace a matriarchy. 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.
India