BCH #007: What is matriarchy?

You may think 'matriarchy' means women chasing men around with sticks. But it describes cultures that are matrilineal and matrilocal, where children grow up learning to care for their mother's lands.

Image based on a Canaanite relief of Astarte.

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For most of the time that human beings have existed, we have lived in cultures in which children grew up learning to take care of their mothers’ homelands. This could be a summary of what a matriarchy is: a culture where children grow up learning to care for their mothers’ homelands. Though it may sound fantastical and utopian to the modern mind, in such cultures, women were (are) honoured.

Some people are uncomfortable with the word ‘matriarchy’. They think it implies patriarchy-in-reverse: women ruling over and dominating men. Heide Goettner-Abendroth, who founded HAGIA, the International Academy for Modern Matriarchal Studies in 1986, clarifies things for us. In her anthology Societies of Peace: Matriarchies Past, Present and Future (2009), she explains:

We are not obliged to follow the current, male-biased understanding of the term ‘matriarchy’ as meaning ‘rule of women’ or ‘domination by the mothers’. Matriarchy is commonly interpreted this way because it seems an obvious parallel to ‘patriarchy’. In fact, the Greek word arché has a double meaning. It means ‘beginning’ as well as ‘domination’.[1]

The suffix arché means something like ‘primacy’. Because all people begin their lives inside a woman’s womb, the primacy of ‘matriarchy’ is that of origination, our natural starting point and birthplace. Attorney and activist Mililani B. Trask writes:

In ancient times, as in modern, Hawaiians understood that the evolution of life arises from the female and that the balance of life, male and female principles at their inception, arises from the female. This understanding pervaded traditional Hawaiian society and set the foundation for all aspects of the social order ...[2]

In contrast, the primacy implied in ‘patriarchy’ is one that attempts to override origination. It is an imposed primacy, so it implies domination. Matriarchy refers to a system that honours women as the birthplace of humanity; patriarchy refers to a system in which men claim leadership and decision-making power by force.

The two main characteristics of a matriarchal culture are simple: matrilineage and matrilocality. In matrilineal cultures, people trace their family lineage through their mother’s line, rather than being named after their fathers.