[ **up: [[Anthropology]]** ] --- # Matriarchy Not to be confused with [[Matrilineality|matrilineal]], [[matrilocal|matrilocal]] or [[Matrifocality|matrifocal]] societies. --- ## Etymology The incorrect belief that ‘matriarchy’ means “rule by women” has “\[provoked] [[“Lacking a clear scientific definition of ‘matriarchy,’ the term has been misunderstood as ‘rule by women,’ provoking a lasting, ideologically distorted prejudice against it.'”|a lasting, ideologically distorted prejudice against it.]]”[^1] > “To better understand the word ‘matriarchy,’ we must examine its linguistic background. The Greek word ‘arché’ means both ‘domination’ and, in the older sense of the word, ‘beginning.’ These meanings cannot be conflated. One would not translate ‘arche-type’ (primordial type) as ‘dominator-type,’ nor understand ‘arche-ology’ (knowledge of the earliest cultures) as ‘teaching of domination.’ \[…] Based on the earlier meaning of ‘arché,’ matriarchy means ‘the mothers from the beginning.’ This refers to the biological fact that mothers, in giving birth, engender life and point to the fact that they are creators of culture itself. This unique societal form has been described as ‘matrilineal,’‘matrifocal,’ ‘matristic,’ or ‘gylanic.’”[^2] --- > Although Bachofen and Lewis Morgan confined the “mother-right” inside households, it was the basis of female influence upon the whole society.[^3] --- [[Matriarchal societies are not the women-dominating inverse of patriarchal societies; they are “true gender-egalitarian societies”.|Goettner-Abendroth posits that patriarchal societies are not the women-dominating inverse of patriarchal societies; they are 'true gender-egalitarian societies'.]][^4] > 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.[^5] > 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’”.[^6] > 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.”[^7] > Patriarchy is held to be about power over others while matriarchy is held to be about power from within, Starhawk having written on that distinction and Adler having argued that matriarchal power is not possessive and not controlling, but is harmonious with nature, arguing that women are uniquely capable of using power without exploitative purposes.[^8] [^1]: Heide Goettner-Abendroth, ‘[[Goettner-Abendroth. ‘Re-thinking “Matriarchy” in Modern Matriarchal Studies Using Two Examples_ The Khasi and the Mosuo’, 2018.|Re-thinking “Matriarchy” in Modern Matriarchal Studies Using Two Examples: The Khasi and the Mosuo]]’, *Asian Journal of Women’s Studies*, vol. 24, issue 1, p. 3. [^2]: Heide Goettner-Abendroth, ‘[[Goettner-Abendroth. ‘Re-thinking “Matriarchy” in Modern Matriarchal Studies Using Two Examples_ The Khasi and the Mosuo’, 2018.|Re-thinking “Matriarchy” in Modern Matriarchal Studies Using Two Examples: The Khasi and the Mosuo]]’, *Asian Journal of Women’s Studies*, vol. 24, issue 1, pp. 5–6. [^3]: ‘Matriarchy’, *Wikipedia*, updated 10 March 2025, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matriarchy. [^4]: Heide Goettner-Abendroth, ‘[[Goettner-Abendroth. ‘Re-thinking “Matriarchy” in Modern Matriarchal Studies Using Two Examples_ The Khasi and the Mosuo’, 2018.|Re-thinking “Matriarchy” in Modern Matriarchal Studies Using Two Examples: The Khasi and the Mosuo]]’, *Asian Journal of Women’s Studies*, vol. 24, issue 1, p. 5. [^5]: ‘Matriarchy’, *Wikipedia*, updated 10 March 2025, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matriarchy. [^6]: ‘Matriarchy’, *Wikipedia*, updated 10 March 2025, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matriarchy. [^7]: ‘Matriarchy’, *Wikipedia*, updated 10 March 2025, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matriarchy. [^8]: ‘Matriarchy’, *Wikipedia*, updated 10 March 2025, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matriarchy.