22/09/2025
“Matriarchies are not just a reversal of patriarchies, with women ruling over men – as the usual misinterpretation would have it. Matriarchies are mother-centered societies. They are based on maternal values: care-taking, nurturing, mothering. This holds for everybody: for mothers and those who are not mothers, for women and men alike.
Matriarchal societies are consciously built upon maternal values and motherly work, and this is why they are much more realistic than patriarchies. They are, on principle, need-oriented. They aim to meet everyone’s needs with the greatest benefit. So, in matriarchies, mothering – which originates as a biological fact – is transformed into a cultural model. This model is much more appropriate to the human condition than the patriarchal conception of motherhood which is used to make women, and especially mothers, into slaves.
Within matriarchal cultures, equality means more than just a levelling of differences. Natural differences between the genders and the generations are respected and honoured, but they never serve to create hierarchies, as is common in patriarchy. The different genders and generations each have their own dignity, and through complementary areas of activity, they function in concert one other. More precisely, matriarchies are societies with complementary equality, where great care is taken to provide a balance. This applies to the balance between genders, among generations, and between humans and nature. Maternal values as ethical principles pervade all areas of a matriarchal society. This creates an attitude of care-taking, nurturing, and peacemaking.
This can be observed on all levels of society: the economic, the social, the political, and the spiritual-cultural.
At the social level, matriarchal societies are based on the clan, and on the “symbolic order of the mother,” Maternal values are spiritual principles and derive from nature. Mother Nature cares for all beings, however different they may be. The same applies to human mothers: a good mother cares for all her children, embracing their diversity.
This holds true for men as well. If a man in a matriarchal society desires to acquire status among his peers, or even become a representative of the clan to the outside word, then he must be like a “good mother,”
In matriarchies, you don’t have to be a biological mother in order to be acknowledged as a woman, because matriarchies practice the common motherhood of a group of sisters. Each individual sister does not necessarily have to have children, but together they are all “mothers” of any children that any of them have. This motherhood is founded on the freedom of women to decide on their own about whether or not to have biological children.
This is possible because matriarchal people live together in large kinship groups, formed according to the principle of matrilineality. The clan’s name, and all social status and political titles, are passed on through the mother’s line. Such a matri-clan consists of at least three generations of women, along with their brothers, nephews and maternal uncles. In classic cases, the matri-clan lives in one big clan-house. This is called matrilocality. These principles of matrilineality and matrilocality put mothers at the center; in this way women guide their clans without ruling.”
~ Heide Goettner-Abendroth, excerpt from Matriarchies Are Not Just a Reversal of Patriarchies: A Structural Analysis
Art: Kathleen Peterson
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Definition of the suffix “archy:”
denoting a type of rule or government, corresponding to nouns ending in -arch.
Origin:
representing Greek arkh(e)ia 'government, leadership', formed as -arch: see =y'.
Note: We don’t need to be too wary of the “archy” suffix. A “mater” leads and guides her many children in learning to rule and self-govern themselves.
Rebekah Myers
