Women Across Cultures: Matriarchal Traditions of the World

While anthropologists debate the existence of "pure" matriarchy, many societies have been built for millennia on principles of maternal right — matrilineality and matrilocality. In these cultures, inheritance followed the female line, husbands moved into the wife's home, and senior women of the clan made key decisions.

The Mosuo people of China's Yunnan province are often called "the last matriarchy." There is no institution of marriage in the Western sense: women and men practice "walking marriages" — a partner comes for the night and leaves in the morning. Children belong to the mother's clan, property passes through the female line, and the eldest woman heads the household. The Mosuo demonstrate that family can be organized entirely differently than we are accustomed to.

The Iroquois Confederacy in North America was governed by principles that today would be called matriarchal democracy. Clan mothers selected and deposed chiefs, had veto power over declarations of war, and controlled resource distribution. Benjamin Franklin and other American Founding Fathers studied the Iroquois constitution but "forgot" to include women's rights in the American constitution.

The Minangkabau of Sumatra are the world's largest matrilineal people (approximately 4 million). Land, houses, and family property pass from mother to daughter. Notably, the Minangkabau are Muslim, which refutes the stereotype that Islam is incompatible with female autonomy. These examples show that patriarchy is not the "natural order of things" but merely one of many possible ways of organizing society.