Matriarchy is a social system in which positions of power, authority and privilege are held primarily by women, standing as the hypothesized structural mirror of patriarchy. Most anthropologists who use a female-dominance definition of matriarchy report that no clearly matriarchal society, in that strict sense, is known to have existed; historian Susan Mann observed in 2000 that few scholars find a notion of primal matriarchy persuasive. Some societies documented on this atlas are matrilineal, matrilocal or matrifocal, tracing descent, residence or household authority through women, without vesting public political authority in women the way patriarchal societies vest it in men. A minority of scholars, including Peggy Reeves Sanday, argue for a broader definition centered on egalitarian female leadership, under which some documented societies would qualify, keeping the term's exact boundary a live scholarly dispute rather than a settled one.
Facts
Open Questions
Emergence PeriodNot datable: mainstream anthropology holds that no clearly matriarchal society, in the strict sense, has been documented at any point in the historical or ethnographic record. 1 Sourced to the subject's own accountNo attested historical origin point can be dated, because mainstream anthropology holds that no clearly matriarchal society in the strict female-dominance sense has ever been documented; matrilineal and matrifocal societies, which do have a long attested history, are conceptually distinct from matriarchy itself. Institution TypeSourced to the subject's own accountStratification system: a hypothesized gender-based hierarchy of authority, property and social privilege held primarily by women, the structural counterpart to the patriarchy already on this atlas. 1 Cross-Tradition Connections
Associated With
Matrilineal descent is frequently conflated with matriarchy in popular usage; anthropologists treat the two as conceptually distinct.
Matriarchy is discussed in the literature as the hypothesized structural mirror of patriarchy.
Sources
1. Wikipedia: Matriarchy
WikipediaLead section, definitionQuote, Lead section, definition
Matriarchy is a social system in which positions of power and privilege are primarily held by women.
1. Wikipedia: Matriarchy
WikipediaConsensus section, existence debateQuote, Consensus section, existence debate
Most anthropologists, who follow the female dominance definition of matriarchy, argue that there are no known societies that are clearly matriarchal.
Dissenting Readings (1 dissenting reading)
Description
Bachofen's foundational nineteenth century thesis argued that human societies passed through a literal matriarchal stage, Mutterrecht or mother-right, before patriarchy displaced it, reading myth, burial custom and matrilineal inheritance across the ancient Mediterranean as survivals of this earlier order. His evolutionary sequence shaped a century of anthropological and Marxist thought (Engels drew on it directly) but is rejected by mainstream anthropology today: the comparative ethnographic record it was built from is now read as fragmentary and selectively interpreted, and no clearly matriarchal society in Bachofen's own strict sense has been documented among the societies since studied in the field.
A dissenting reading, from Johann Jakob Bachofen, in Das Mutterrecht (1861)Wikipedia: Matriarchy, Wikipedia
Frequently Asked Questions
Have any societies actually been ruled by women?
No society meeting the strict definition, public political authority held mainly by women, is known to have existed; several documented societies are matrilineal or matrilocal without vesting political power in women that way.
Most anthropologists who use a strict, female-dominance definition of matriarchy report that no clearly matriarchal society in that sense is known to have existed, ancient or modern. Some documented societies are matrilineal, matrilocal or matrifocal, tracing descent, residence or household authority through women, without that translating into public political authority held mainly by women the way patriarchal societies vest it in men. A minority of scholars, including Peggy Reeves Sanday, argue for a broader definition centered on egalitarian female leadership under which some documented societies would qualify, and the nineteenth century thesis that literal prehistoric matriarchies once existed everywhere, associated with Johann Jakob Bachofen, is rejected by mainstream anthropology today though it shaped a century of later theory.
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