escaping
I
n the novel Herland by Charlotte Perkins
Gilman, which was published in 1915 , three male
friends set out to find a remote civilization that
is rumoured to be populated only by women.
As they embark on their expedition, the
pioneering mansplainers (yes, they existed even
before they had a label) speculated on what they
might find. “It will be like a nunnery,” said one; “just
women and mothers,” said another; “we mustn’t look
for inventions and progress... or any sort of order and
organisation,” said the biggest dunderhead of them
all. “It’ll be awfully primitive... they would fight among
themselves. Women always do.”
What they in fact found was a beautifully run
democracy, a community untainted by pettiness,
jealousy or bitterness, a land where everyone was
looked after. In other words, what they found was
a typical matriarchal society, but with one fantastical
difference – reproduction was parthenogenetic:
no males required.
Back in the real world, matriarchal societies still
exist on most continents, having somehow survived
through the ages and the unassailable march of
patriarchy. Among these are the Mosuo, in China; the
Khasi, in India; the Minangkabau, in Indonesia; the
Bribri, in Costa Rica and the Zapotec, in Mexico.
Professor Heide Goettner-Abendroth, a world
expert on the subject and founder of the International
Academy HAGIA for Modern Matriarchal Studies, has
researched all these and more, and has written one
of the best books on the subject: Matriarchal Societies:
Studies on Indigenous Cultures Across the Globe.
She is convinced that prehistoric clans were
matriarchal, and remained so for millennia – roughly
from the Paleolithic period (about 2. 5 million years
ago) to 4 ,000BC, when patriarchy began to take over.
“Women were revered in prehistoric times because
they were the givers of life and the ones who ensured
the survival of the tribe,” she says. “They were
treated almost like deities. Over thousands of years,the reverence in which they were held faded, but they
retained their status as heads of their communities –
as matriarchs – until patriarchalisation, through clan
wars and conquests (essentially through violence),
gradually became established as the norm.”
Matriarchies, says Professor Goettner-Abendroth,
operate in a very different way to patriarchies.
“People often make the mistake of thinking of
matriarchy as patriarchy run by women, but this
is absolutely not so. They do not mirror male-run
societies in any way. For instance, they are not
defined by ruling, or by holding or exerting power.
The women have strength for sure, but they do not
use it to dominate, because matriarchal communities
are non-hierarchical. They are egalitarian, democratic- decisions are made by consensus – and the
distribution of wealth is balanced so that no one
goes without. Women hold the purse strings and use
the funds not for their personal gain but to ensure
that the needs of the group are met. Accumulation is
frowned upon.”
She concedes that, given the lack of intention to
rule, it may be more accurate to say that the culture
is not, strictly speaking, matriarchal, but matrilineal - where ancestry is traced through the maternal line;
matrifocal – where mothers are at the centre of the
family and fathers play a secondary or even more
detached role in raising children; and matrilocal –
where couples, or sometimes only the woman and her
children, continue to live with, or near, her mother.
And interestingly, for many marriage is of very little
significance – children are born of happy unions, the
need to produce or the simple human desire for sex.
No one feels tied down, or compelled to be with someone
to protect property or status, and there are no
imperatives – financial, social or otherwise – for
relationships to continue to the point of misery.
Like what you hear? In honour of International
Women’s Day this month, we explore five of the
world’s remaining matriarchal societies...
“Matriarchal communities are egalitarian, democratic –
decisions are made by consensus – and the distribution
of wealth is balanced so that no one goes without”