Matriarchy
Matriarchy is a form of
society in which power is with the
women and especially with the
mothers of a community.
The word
matriarchy derives from the
Latin word
mater meaning
mother and the
Greek word
archein meaning
to rule. There exists a different term for 'women's rule,' namely
gynecocracy, sometimes referred to as
gynocracy.
Matriarchy is distinct from
matrilineality, where children are identified in terms of their mother rather than their father, and extended families and tribal alliances form along female blood-lines. For instance, in
Jewish
Halakhic tradition only a person born of a Jewish mother is automatically considered Jewish. Hence Jewish descent is passed on from the mother to the child (see:
Who is a Jew).
Matriarchy is also distinct from
matrilocality, which some
anthropologists use to describe societies where maternal authority is prominent in domestic relations, owing to the husband joining the wife's family, rather than the wife moving to the husband's village or tribe, such that she is supported by her extended family, and husbands tend to be more socially isolated.
Matriarchy is a combination of these factors; it includes matrilineality and matrilocality. But what is most important is the fact that women are in charge for the distribution of goods for the clan and, especially, the sources of nourishment, fields and food. This characteristic feature sees every clan member dependent beyond matrilineality and matrilocality and grants women such a strong position that these societies are now considered matriarchal.
Some traditional matriarchal societies have been presented by scholars and indigenous speakers from still existing matriarchal societies at two
World Congresses on Matriarchal Studies. The first one was held in 2003 in Luxembourg, Europe; it was sponsored by the Minister of Women's Affairs of Luxembourg, Marie-Josée Jacobs, and organized and guided by Heide Goettner-Abendroth. The second one took place in 2005 in San Marcos, Texas/USA, it was sponsored by Genevieve Vaughan and again led by Heide Goettner-Abendroth.
Due to a lack of any clear and consistent definition of the word 'matriarchy', the discussion remains confusing: The
Wemale culture of western
Seram, studied by A.E. Jensen during the
Frobenius Institute expedition of 1938, is often indicated as an example of matriarchy. See:
Karl Kerenyi noted in passing (introduction to
Eleusis : Archetypal Image of Mother and Daughter 1967, p. xxxii). On the other hand, anthropologist Donald Brown's list of "human universals" (i.e. features shared by all current human societies) includes
men being the "dominant element" in public political affairs (Brown 1991, p. 137). He refers the opinion of mainstream
anthropology.
Feminist Joan Bamberger notes that the historical record contains no reliable evidence of any society in which women dominated (Bamberger 1974), though there are many known
matrilineal societies. The
Trobriand Islands were considered a matriarchy by anthropologist
Bronisław Malinowski; the dispute this view has engendered is discussed at that entry. Peter N. Stearns and other historians have speculated as to whether or not agricultural
Japan was a matriarchy prior to contact with patriarchal
China. (Stearns 2000, p. 51). On the other hand, anthropologist
Peggy Reeves Sanday favors redefining and reintroducing the word matriarchy, especially in reference to modern, matrilineal societies like the
Minangkabau. This group lives in
West Sumatra and numbers about four million; it is considered the largest and most stable matrilineal society in the modern world. Sanday argues that this society is a modern matriarchy defined not in polar opposition to patriarchy, but on unique terms. A clear and consistent definition has been given by Heide Goettner-Abendroth, who did cross-cultural research on all of the still existing matriarchal societies of today (in her major work on matriarchy). Her viewpoint is close to that of Sanday. One of her examples are the
Mosuo people of Southwestern China. Furthermore, the
Minicoy islanders are also considered to be one of the living matrilineal societies today.
Nair Matrifocality
Anthropologist R. L. Smith (2002) refers to 'matrifocality' as the kinship structure of a social system where the mother assumes structural prominence. Most anthropologists distinguish this from matriarchy.
The traditional
Nair community in Kerala,
South India is matrifocal by their definition of 'matrifocality'. (Nowadays this system is rarely practiced. The members of the Nair community now live in nuclear families). A traditional Nair matrifocal family is called as a Tarawad or Marumakkathayam family. A traditional Nair Tarwad consists of a mother and her children living together with their mother's surviving eldest brother or eldest surviving maternal uncle who is called as
Karanavan. The Karnavan exercised full powers over the affairs of the family. The main significance of this system is that the heirs to the property were the women in the family and the men folk were only allowed to enjoy the benefits during their lifetime. The naming system of the Nair community had the prefix of their mother's 'family name' and they adopted the maternal uncle's surname. The Marumakkathayam system of Kerala was a legal right which determined inheritance through the female line. Thus if a family property was to be partitioned all female members would receive one share and all male members who were direct offspring of the family name would receive one share. Thus a brother might receive only one share while his sister and her children (and grandchildren by her daughters) would each receive a share. This right was removed by the Kerala Joint Hindu Family System (Abolition) Act, 1975.
Whether matriarchal societies might have existed at some time in the distant past is controversial. The controversy began in reaction to the book by
Johann Jakob Bachofen Mother Right: An Investigation of the Religious and Juridical Character of Matriarchy in the Ancient World in 1861. Several generations of ethnologists were inspired by his pseudo-evolutionary theory of archaic matriarchy. Following him and
Jane Ellen Harrison, several generations of scholars, arguing usually from myths or oral traditions and neolithic female cult-figures, suggested that many ancient societies were matriarchal, or even that there existed a wide-ranging matriarchal society prior to the ancient cultures of which we are aware (see for example
The White Goddess by
Robert Graves). More recent archaeologists like
Marija Gimbutas have argued for a widespread matriarchal culture in
pre-Indo-European Old Europe of the Neolithic.
On the other hand, authors like Cynthia Eller, professor at Montclair State University, as well as Philip G. Davis, author of
Goddess Unmasked, have come to increasingly call in doubt the factual accuracy of these hypotheses. According to Professor Eller, Marija Gimbuta had a large part in constructing a
myth of historical matriarchy by examining Eastern Europe cultures that, by and large, never really bore any resemblance in character to the alleged universal matriarchality of Gimbutas and Graves. She demonstrates that in "actually documented primitive societies" paternity is never ignored and that the
sacred status of feminine goddesses does not automatically increase female
social status, affirming that utopian matriachy is simply an inversion of antifeminism and in fact paralleling the denigrating exaltations of an idealised motherhood found in comtemporary organised religion.
One area where written myths are available from an early period is the
Aegean culture-zone, where the
Minoan Great Goddess was worshipped in a society where women and men were allegedly equals. Gender equality is a typical characteristic of matriarchy, according to the claims of modern Matriarchal Studies.
Modern '
Goddess women' are sometimes too quick to assume that any culture that worships a
Mother Goddess must be matriarchal. But some mentioned author believe there are traces, under the insistently patriarchal Olympian mythology of classical Greece, of earlier matrilineal and matrifocal systems. See the entries for
Alcimede or for
Hyas for examples.
A famous legendary gynarchy (not matriarchy) on the edges of the Greek cultural horizon was
Amazon society, which took shape in the imaginations of classical Greeks, based on reports of
Scythian female status and even female warriors. However, extreme caution is called for in determining to what extent, if any, such myths or oral traditions reflected reality. About Amazons,
Michael Grant claims that these female warriors were said to live at the boundaries of the world to which Greeks had travelled, making them kin to marvellous beings or
monsters supposed to dwell in distant lands, like the
Blemmyes or
Cynocephali. Others like Gerhard Pöllauer, Marguerite Rigoglioso and esoteric/neopagan author Vicki Noble disagree.
Regardless of actual historical fact, many cultures have myths about a time when women were dominant. Bamberger (1974) examines several of these myths from South American cultures, and concludes that, by portraying the women from this period as evil, they often serve to keep women under control.
Historian
Ronald Hutton has argued that there is no necessary correlation between the worship of female
deities and relative levels of social or legal egalitarianism between the sexes. He has pointed out that within European history, in
seventeenth century Spain there were many religious institutions staffed exclusively by women. A female quasi-deity was a conspicuous part of public religious
veneration, and
cult images of female supernatural beings were frequently encountered. Spain can be compared to the seventeenth century
Netherlands, where the worship of female quasi-deities was emphatically rejected and female
clergy did not exist. Yet, the social and legal status of women was much higher in the Netherlands than in Spain during this period. In the Netherlands, women were freer to move about unwatched, and could own businesses of their own and separate property. In Spain, their public roles, and their rights under both law and unwritten custom, were sharply circumscribed. But these examples are all from the epoch of full patriarchal history.
The unclear concept of matriarchy, and of its replacement by "
patriarchy" can be linked to the historical "inevitabilities" which the
nineteenth century's concept of
progress through
cultural evolution introduced into
anthropology.
Friedrich Engels, among others, formed the notion that some primitive peoples did not grasp the link between
sexual intercourse and
pregnancy. They therefore had no clear notion of
paternity, according to this hypothesis; women produced children mysteriously, without necessary links to the man or men they had sex with. When men discovered paternity, according to the hypothesis, they acted to claim power to monopolize women and claim children as their own offspring. The move from primitive matriarchy to patriarchy was a step forward for human knowledge.
This belief system was the result of errors in early
ethnography, which in return was the result of unsophisticated methods of
field work. When strangers arrive and start asking where babies come from, the urge to respond
imaginatively is hard to resist, as
Margaret Mead discovered in Samoa. In fact, while prior to the discovery of
egg cells and
genetics there have been many different explanations of the
mechanics of pregnancy and the relative contributions of either sex, no human group, however primitive, is unaware of the link between intercourse and pregnancy. The fact that each child has one unique father has come more recently, however; Greek and Roman writers thought that the seed of two men might both contribute to the character of the child. By the time these mistakes were corrected in anthropology, however, the idea that a matriarchy had once existed had been picked up on in
comparative religion and
archaeology, and was used as the basis of new hypotheses that were unrelated to the postulated ignorance of primitive people about paternity.
In the late nineteenth century, belief in primitive matriarchies was also allied with
Max Müller's hypothesis that an ethnically distinct
Aryan race had invaded and displaced or dominated earlier populations in prehistoric Europe. Their conquests, according to Müller, were responsible for the spread of the
Indo-European languages; they would have also replaced an earlier language and culture in the invaded areas where Indo-European languages are now spoken. This theory, and the corresponding hypothesis for
India, the
Aryan invasion theory, are controversial.
Marija Gimbutas has advocated the strongest form of the hypothesis, that of military conquest and forced cultural displacement, in recent decades, and given a lot of evidence.
The idea of peaceful matriarchal civilizations being put to the torch by
patriarchal, nomadic barbarian invaders has lived on as a powerful literary
trope. The
Nazi ideology of a
master race of
Aryan patriarchal conquerors was based in part on Müller's hypothesis about conquering Aryans being the founders of the European race.
More recent uses of the theme share essentially the same narrative. Goddess worship is one motif referred to by
James Joyce in his novels such as
Ulysses and
Finnegans Wake. In addition to
Robert Graves, poets such as
T. S. Eliot and
Ezra Pound made use of the theme.
Mary Renault's
historical novels about
Greek mythology and history such as
The King Must Die combine motifs of political conflict between goddess and god worshippers with
The Golden Bough's hypothesis about
dying and reviving gods. The patriarchal conquest of matriarchy motif is found in literally dozens of fantasy novels, from
Marion Zimmer Bradley's historical revisions of
Arthurian romance and the
Trojan War to works of pure
fantasy such as
Guy Gavriel Kay's
A Song for Arbonne. Gender roles and the conflict of patriarch vs. matriarchy is a major theme in the
Wheel of Time books by
Robert Jordan (fantasy).
In the expanded universe of
Star Wars, the women of Dathomir are portrayed as the ruling sex. Another matriarchy is the Hapan Consortium, a cluster of 63 planets, that are all ruled by the Queen Mother of Hapes.
In the fantasy world of
Forgotten Realms, the evil
Drow race is a
highly matriarchial society where the females rule drow societies. Males are merely servants and regarded as pets.
*
Patriarch*
Patriarchy*
Patriarchs (Bible)*
Matriarchs (Bible)*
The First Sex*
The Myth of Matriarchal Prehistory* Bamberger, Joan. (1974). '"The Myth of Matriarchy: Why Men Rule in Primitive Society," in
Women, Culture, and Society, edited by Michelle Zimbalist Rosaldo and Louise Lamphere, pp. 263-280. Stanford, California: Stanford University Press.
* Brown, Donald. (1991).
Human Universals. Philadelphia: Temple University Press
*
Czaplicka, Marie Antoinette. (1914).
Aboriginal Siberia, a study in social anthropology. Oxford. Clarendon press.
* del Giorgio, J.F. (2006).
The Oldest Europeans. A.J.Place. Matrifocality and women's rights in the Paleolithic.
*
Eller, Cynthia (2001).
The Myth of Matriarchal Prehistory: Why an Invented Past Won't Give Women a Future. ISBN 0807067938
*
Gimbutas, Marija (1991). "The Language of the Goddess".
*
Goldberg, Steven (1993)
Why Men Rule: A Theory of Male Dominance, rev. ed. ISBN 0812692373
*
Hutton, Ronald (1993).
The Pagan Religions of the Ancient British Isles ISBN 0631189467
*
Lapatin, Kenneth (2002).
Mysteries of the Snake Goddess: Art, Desire, and the Forging of History. ISBN 0306813289
*
Sanday, Peggy Reeves. (2004).
Woman at the Center: Life in a Modern Matriarchy. Cornell University Press. ISBN 0801489067
*
Stearns, Peter N. (2000).
Gender in World History. New York Routledge. ISBN 0415223105
* Smith R.T. (
2002) Matrifocality, in International encyclopedia of the social and behavioral sciences (eds) Smelser & Baltes, vol 14, pp 9416.
*
www.hagia.de*
www.goettner-abendroth.de*
www.second-congress-matriarchal-studies.com*
Matriarchy.Info: ancient and contemporary matriarchal societies
*
Woman Thou Art God: Prose and facts regarding matriarchy, spirituality, female superiority and the feminine divine. Non-profit.
*
Cattle ownership makes it a man's world New Scientist (1. October 2003): A new study claims to demonstrate that early female-dominated societies lost their power to men when they started herding cattle.
*
The Domain of Patriarchy:
Robert Sheaffer's skeptical site discusses matriarchies, Goddess mythology, and claims of non-patriarchal societies.
