Has any society truly been ruled by women? It depends who's defining it
By the strict definition, a society where women hold nearly all power over men, most anthropologists say no clearly matriarchal society has ever been documented. But some scholars argue that definition is itself a mirror image of patriarchy, and that real matriarchies look very different: led by mothers, yet broadly equal.
The word joins the Latin for mother with the Greek for to rule. It is easily confused with related ideas. Matrilineal societies pass descent and property through the female line, matrilocal couples live near the wife's family, and matrifocal households are led mainly by women. None of these necessarily means women dominate politics, and many cultures, from some Scheduled Tribes in India to communities in Kerala and Karnataka, follow matrilineal customs.
The German scholar Heide Göttner-Abendroth argues that people raised under male rule assume a matriarchy must simply flip the arrangement. Her school defines matriarchy by four features instead: descent and residence organised around mothers, decisions made by consensus, a gift economy largely run by women, and religion centred on rebirth and a feminine divine. In her view, all sexes are valued equally, each with its own sphere. Critics on both sides of the debate complain that many definitions are too vague to be useful.
The idea of a lost age of women's rule is old. Many nineteenth-century thinkers believed it preceded male rule, and from the 1950s the archaeologist Marija Gimbutas described a goddess-centred Neolithic Old Europe later displaced by Indo-European patriarchy. Sceptics reply that goddess worship and women-centred families have often coexisted with female subordination, and the scholar Cynthia Eller argues that Gimbutas helped build a myth.
Legends keep the idea alive. Herodotus claimed the Sarmatians descended from Amazons and that their women hunted on horseback and rode into war dressed like the men. Julius Caesar spoke of Amazon conquests in Asia, several Church Fathers treated them as real, and medieval writers placed them as far north as the Baltic. Basque myth offers a gentler version, with the Earth as mother of the sister Sun and Moon.
Source: Matriarchy
