Matriarchy(s)

[Mr. R]

As I was pondering about my "World" I thought about introducing one in a section in my world but for a change of pace make it a matriarchy. BUT...

I am not terribly familiar with matriarchies other than what I learned about the Iroquois Confederacy, so I turn to the learned sages here to direct me to any sources of information so I can make it believable. I do NOT want Talislanta Viragos, but something more acceptable!

[Scott Ruggels]

Stick with the Iroquois confederacy, as it was a mostly stable society, and you already know it. Most historical Matriarchies were more Matrilineal than matrifocal.  Land inheritance in The Himalayas was through the women, who would then take on husbands to work the land. 

[Lord Liaden]

Here's a quick reference you can use as springboard to further research whichever interests you: Women Lead Here: 8 Matriarchal Societies Around The World.

[Vondy]

The elves in my campaign follow the pattern of Masuo people. They are matriarchal and matrilocal, and practice "walking marriage," though its really walking romance, because not all Masuo romantic relationships are specifically closed (though many are). Masuo women who come of age are often given room with exterior doors on the outer part of the clan-house. The Masuo traditionally honor their fathers on their birthdays, and it is considered unseemly for a woman not to be able to identify her children's fathers, but uncles were are primary male caregivers and figures in a child's life. Masuo men, historically, were hunters, warriors, and merchants, but women had a much more prominent role in trades, farming, land-administration, financial management, etc. For my game I made a few tweaks. My elves are somewhat egalitarianism in terms of 1) female elves more freely pursuing traditionally "male" roles and 2) stolen from an African matriarchal tribe, the local "elf-lord," which presumes a more charismatic style of "kingship," is always a son, or sometimes nephew, of most powerful local clan's matriarch. So, technically, they have a king, but his role is fairly strictly limited to being the magistrate and war-leader. The succession, however, happens when his mother (or aunt) dies! Most of the internal political tension of the elves in my campaign happens between women jockeying for clan leadership, and then clans jockeying the becomes the "first clan" of whatever settlement.

[Steve]

1 hour ago, Vondy said:

The elves in my campaign follow the pattern of Masuo people. They are matriarchal and matrilocal, and practice "walking marriage," though its really walking romance, because not all Masuo romantic relationships are specifically closed (though many are). Masuo women who come of age are often given room with exterior doors on the outer part of the clan-house. The Masuo traditionally honor their fathers on their birthdays, and it is considered unseemly for a woman not to be able to identify her children's fathers, but uncles were are primary male caregivers and figures in a child's life. Masuo men, historically, were hunters, warriors, and merchants, but women had a much more prominent role in trades, farming, land-administration, financial management, etc. For my game I made a few tweaks. My elves are somewhat egalitarianism in terms of 1) female elves more freely pursuing traditionally "male" roles and 2) stolen from an African matriarchal tribe, the local "elf-lord," which presumes a more charismatic style of "kingship," is always a son, or sometimes nephew, of most powerful local clan's matriarch. So, technically, they have a king, but his role is fairly strictly limited to being the magistrate and war-leader. The succession, however, happens when his mother (or aunt) dies! Most of the internal political tension of the elves in my campaign happens between women jockeying for clan leadership, and then clans jockeying the becomes the "first clan" of whatever settlement.

I tried looking them up. Did you mean Mosuo? That was the spelling that came to a Wikipedia entry.

 

I suppose the elvish version could have tribal variants that are more like Greek Amazons and others that are more peaceful, agrarian sorts.

[Vondy]

7 minutes ago, Steve said:

I tried looking them up. Did you mean Mosuo? That was the spelling that came to a Wikipedia entry.

 

I suppose the elvish version could have tribal variants that are more like Greek Amazons and others that are more peaceful, agrarian sorts.

 

Yes, I am a notorious aphasia-driven speller-man. Mosuo.

[Steve]

What might be an interesting approach is to have a region of the known world where magic use is gender-linked, so women are the only ones with magic ability. Witch-Queens rule there, and the nobility is thus composed of women with witchcraft ability. Commoners would be those without any magic ability, but a girl displaying talent could be adopted by a noble house.

[Lord Liaden]

That sounds a lot like Andre Norton's Estcarp from her "Witch World" novels, except those witches weren't a noble class as such. A girl from any class who displayed the "Power" would be drafted into their ranks, resembling a cloistered religious order as well as a ruling oligarchy.

[Steve]

12 minutes ago, Lord Liaden said:

That sounds a lot like Andre Norton's Estcarp from her "Witch World" novels, except those witches weren't a noble class as such. A girl from any class who displayed the "Power" would be drafted into their ranks, resembling a cloistered religious order as well as a ruling oligarchy.

A religious order would work too, but it gives a somewhat different feel than noble families. Inbreeding to try to keep the blood “pure” is a possible outcome of making them nobility. A religious order could function like the witches of the Dune novels, whose name I can never seem to spell right.

[DShomshak]

The cover article for the October 2022 issue of Scientific American is "The Power of Viking Women," with the abstract, "Analyses of ancient North Atlantic textiles show that Viking and medieval women wielded considerable cultural and economic influence." No, the old Norse weren't matriarchal as such. But women ran the farms while the men were out raiding and trading for years at a time. More particularly, cloth-weaving was exclusively women's work (with taboos against men even entering the weaving-house), and cloth was of great economic importantce -- to the extent that standardized lengths of cloth were used as money. So not as simply patriarchal as one might think.

 

Dean Shomshak

[dbm]

On 9/19/2022 at 8:09 PM, Steve said:

What might be an interesting approach is to have a region of the known world where magic use is gender-linked, so women are the only ones with magic ability.

Another example of this kind of circumstance is Aes Sedai from The Wheel of Time. Male wielders of The One Power go mad over time since the source of magic they use has been corrupted. But women do not suffer this fate since the pull from a slightly different, but interconnected, well of power. 

[Lawnmower Boy]

Eastern Woodlands culture was matrilineal rather than matriarchal. I'm having an attack of the lazies, so I won't do a text search through The Deerslayer to find Natty Bumpo's and Chingachgook's thoroughly patriarchal discussion of matrilineal property, but the gist of it is that cabins and gardens and settlements are domestic, womanly things, beneath men, whose job is to hunt and make war and order women around. 

 

I'd add that there are hints of this kind of thinking in the earliest stages of settled agriculture in the Eastern Hemisphere, too. Notably, locations and places take the feminine gender in Afro-Asiatic languages. [Takes a moment to don tinfoil hat] And the feminine gender was linguistically  innovated in putatively Indo-European areas at the beginning of the Iron Age, when and where we see the first sign of city states, or at least, oppida.