Matriarchy

Matriarchy is a social system in which positions of power and privilege are held by women. In a broader sense it can also extend to moral authority, social privilege, and control of property. While those definitions apply in general English, definitions specific to anthropology and feminism differ in some respects.

Matriarchies may also be confused with matrilineal, matrilocal, and matrifocal societies. While some may consider any non-patriarchal system to be matriarchal, most academics exclude those systems from matriarchies as strictly defined. Many societies have had matriarchal elements.

According to the Oxford English Dictionary (OED), matriarchy is a "form of social organization in which the mother or oldest female is the head of the family, and descent and relationship are reckoned through the female line; government or rule by a woman or women." A popular definition, according to James Peoples and Garrick Bailey, is "female dominance". Within the academic discipline of cultural anthropology, according to the OED, matriarchy is a "culture or community in which such a system prevails" or a "family, society, organization, etc., dominated by a woman or women" without reference to laws that require women to dominate. In general anthropology, according to William A. Haviland, matriarchy is "rule by women". According to Lawrence A. Kuzner in 1997, A. R. Radcliffe-Brown argued in 1924 that the definitions of matriarchy and patriarchy had "logical and empirical failings (...) [and] were too vague to be scientifically useful".

Most academics exclude egalitarian nonpatriarchal systems from matriarchies more strictly defined. 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, while she believed that matriarchies are egalitarian.

The word matriarchy, for a society politically led by women, especially mothers, who also control property, is often interpreted to mean the general opposite of patriarchy, but it is not an opposite. 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'". Journalist Margot Adler wrote, "literally, ... ["matriarchy"] means government by mothers, or more broadly, government and power in the hands of women." 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." According to Cynthia Eller, "'matriarchy' can be thought of ... as a shorthand description for any society in which women's power is equal or superior to men's and in which the culture centers around values and life events described as 'feminine.'" Eller wrote that the idea of matriarchy mainly rests on two pillars, romanticism and modern social criticism. With respect to a prehistoric matriarchal Golden Age, according to Barbara Epstein, "matriarchy ... means a social system organized around matriliny and goddess worship in which women have positions of power." According to Adler, in the Marxist tradition, it usually refers to a pre-class society "where women and men share equally in production and power."

According to Adler, "a number of feminists note that few definitions of the word [matriarchy], despite its literal meaning, include any concept of power, and they suggest that centuries of oppression have made it impossible for women to conceive of themselves with such power."

Matriarchy has often been presented as negative by male, in contrast to patriarchy as natural and inevitable for society, and thus that matriarchy is hopeless. Love and Shanklin wrote:

When we hear the word "matriarchy", we are conditioned to a number of responses: that matriarchy refers to the past and that matriarchies have never existed; that matriarchy is a hopeless fantasy of female domination, of mothers dominating children, of women being cruel to men. Conditioning us negatively to matriarchy is, of course, in the interests of patriarchs. We are made to feel that patriarchy is natural; we are less likely to question it, and less likely to direct our energies to ending it.