matriarchy

matriarchy familial and political rule by women. Many contemporary anthropologists reject the claims of J. J. Bachofen and Lewis Morgan that early societies were matriarchal, although some contemporary feminist theory has suggested that a primitive matriarchy did indeed exist at one time. Claims for the existence of matriarchy rest on three types of data: societies in which women make the major contribution to subsistence, societies in which descent is traced through women (i.e., matrilineal), and myths of ancient rule by women. But myths of ancient female dominance invariably highlight women's failure as rulers and end with men assuming power. Anthropologists believe that these myths function as a rationalization of contemporary male dominance. Women may have greater political power in matrilineal societies than in other societies, but this does not imply matriarchy. Thus, while Iroquois women could nominate and depose members of their ruling council, the members were male and enjoyed a veto over women. Crow women could take ritual offices, but their power was severely limited by menstrual taboos. Women may also have indirect influence through their involvement in material production. In many horticultural societies women produce the bulk of the group's dietary staples. Even so, men often devalue this vital contribution, and usually have the power to expropriate it. The universality of male dominance is not, however, natural or biological, because the form of, and reasons given for, patriarchy differ in most cultures. Through studying the various ways that male dominance is organized and justified, anthropologists have concluded that it is culturally constructed.

Bibliography: See M. Z. Rosaldo and L. Lamphere, ed., Woman, Culture, and Society (1974); R. Reiter, ed., Toward an Anthropology of Women (1975); C. Eller, The Myth of Matriarchal Prehistory (2000).

matriarchy Any society or group that is ruled by women. Matriarchal societies exist among some primitive peoples in South America. See also patriarchy

matriarchy There are two uses of the term matriarchy. The first is identical to common usage, denoting a type of social organization in which mothers head families, and descent may be reckoned through them. The occurrence may be idiosyncratic rather than the basis of social structure.

The second usage, which is speculative and based in evolutionary theories, refers to a society in which mothers hold the main power positions. This theory was popular in the nineteenth century; it was, for example, a vital ingredient in Friedrich Engels's Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State (1884). Engels argued that early hunter-gatherer societies, in which property rights did not exist, would have been ruled by women because of their reproductive powers. However, once land and goods became private property, in the development of sedentary agriculture or pastoralism, it became important for men to ensure the legitimacy of their offspring in order to transfer wealth by descent. Thus arose the system of patriarchy, in which men began to control the reproductive power of women, who lost the political power they had enjoyed under matriarchy.

Like all evolutionary theories the claim that human prehistory was characterized by a shift from mother-right to father-right fell out of favour in the early twentieth century. Despite the attractiveness of this speculation for feminist theory, there is no accredited evidence from either archaeology or anthropology for the existence of matriarchy in this second sense, at any time in history or in any human society.