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Definition: matriarchy from Philip's Encyclopedia

Any society or group that is ruled by women. Matriarchal societies exist among some primitive peoples in South America. See also patriarchy

matriarchy

From The Columbia Encyclopedia
familial and political rule by women. Many contemporary anthropologists reject the claims of J. J. Bachofen and Lewis Morgan that early societies were matriarchal, although some contemporary feminist theory has suggested that a primitive matriarchy did indeed exist at one time. Claims for the existence of matriarchy rest on three types of data: societies in which women make the major contribution to subsistence, societies in which descent is traced through women (i.e., matrilineal), and myths of ancient rule by women. But myths of ancient female dominance invariably highlight women's failure as rulers and end with men assuming power. Anthropologists believe that these myths function as a rationalization of contemporary male dominance. Women may have greater political power in matrilineal societies than in other societies, but this does not imply matriarchy. Thus, while Iroquois women could nominate and depose members of their ruling council, the members were male and enjoyed a veto…
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Full text Article Matriarchy

From World of Sociology, Gale
Matriarchy is social organization in which females are dominant. In this society , women rule over men by matrilineal and matrilocal arrangements. In a matrilineal arrangement, namesake, lineage, property , and marital controls are owned by women and passed down through female family members. In a…
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Full text Article matriarchy

From The Penguin Dictionary of Sociology
A term used in nineteenth-century anthropology to designate a society ruled by women. In contemporary use, it refers more narrowly to a form of the family in which the mother is the head and descent is reckoned through her. The notion of matriarchal systems of domination is controversial. ENGELS , …
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Full text Article matriarchy

From Cambridge Dictionary of Sociology
An anthropological term which describes a society in which descent and lineage are traced through the mother rather than the father; an example of matriarchal descent patterns is that of Judaism, in which it is the mother who confers the status of Jew on her children . It is, however, not the case…
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Full text Article Matriarchy

From Feminist Philosophies A-Z
Matriarchy means ‘mother rule’. It is used to describe communities or ideologies in which women, usually mothers, hold the most social and political power. Friedrich Engels in The Origins of the Family [1884] (1972) argued that matriarchy was a more primitive historical social state than patriarchy…
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Full text Article matriarchy

From The Columbia Encyclopedia
familial and political rule by women. Many contemporary anthropologists reject the claims of J. J. Bachofen and Lewis Morgan that early societies were matriarchal, although some contemporary feminist theory has suggested that a primitive matriarchy did indeed exist at one time. Claims for the…
| 286 words
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Full text Article Matriarchy

From The Classical Tradition
The idea of societies ruled by women is found in classical literature in the legends of the Amazons and the celebrated account of the Lycians in Herodotus ( Histories 1.173). Early terms for such societies in English were gun-archy (i.e., gynarchy)—used by Holinshed in 1587 in his Chronicles of…
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Full text Article matriarchy

From The Hutchinson Unabridged Encyclopedia with Atlas and Weather Guide
Form of society where domestic and political life is dominated by women, where kinship is traced exclusively through the female line, and where religion is centred around the cult of a mother goddess. A society dominated by men is known as a patriarchy . Matriarchy and patriarchy are…
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Full text Article matriarchy

From Britannica Concise Encyclopedia
Social system in which familial and political authority is wielded by women. Under the influence of Charles Darwin ’s theories of evolution and, particularly, the work of the Swiss anthropologist Johann Jakob Bachofen (b. 1815, Basel, Switz.—d. 1887, Basel), some 19th-century scholars believed that…
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Full text Article matriarchy

From Palgrave Macmillan Dictionary of Political Thought
The system of kinship relations whereby authority tends to be vested in mothers rather than in fathers ( see patriarchy ), and in which some or all of those rights and powers traditionally associated with the ‘head’ of the family belong to the mother (including the right to inherit and bequeath…
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Full text Article MATRIARCHY

From Historical Dictionary of the Lesbian and Gay Liberation Movements
The familial and political rule by women/mothers. Anthropologists have studied patriarchy in different cultures, and many feel that based on how male dominance is organized and justified, and how it devalues women's contributions, it is a cultural construction. A primitive matriarchal culture is…
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