The myth of matriarchy
Magna Mater or the mother goddess, who was the chief deity in the pantheon, is the basis for the assumption of primordial matriarchy. The first theses on this subject were presented in 1861 by the Swiss ethnologist and researcher of antiquity Johann Jakob Bachofen. According to his concept, patriarchy was not the primaeval social system. Based on the interpretations of Greek, Roman and Egyptian myths, he concluded that patriarchal structures were preceded by societies where the mother played the key role. She was the head of the family and the one who gave life. According to Bachofen, such an order developed from the preceding phase of hetaerism, in which rights, marriage and fatherhood did not exist. The life-giving power was attributed to women and therefore they were worshipped.
Intellectual play of evolutionists
The mother deity is a recurring concept, although the biophysicist and astrologer Wojciech Jóźwiak calls the idea of matriarchy a myth or even a modern legend created by feminism. “Matriarchy is a response to social needs. To the women’s emancipation movement or, later, to feminism. Women from this movement looked for support in history. And history was created on the basis of various interpretations”, he said in an interview with Tomasz Kwaśniewski published in “Wysokie Obcasy Extra” in 2017.
Agnieszka Kościańska, a cultural anthropologist, views it as a sort of intellectual play rather than a legend. “The concept is quite speculative, like the entire nineteenth-century evolutionism, which inferred about the past of all mankind from various relics, that is cultural and social forms found in “primitive” indigenous peoples. So these things have been found and interpreted in a specific way. But it is difficult to prove that matriarchy did exist”, argues the researcher.
According to most archaeologists, the discovered figurines depicting women played ritual roles and cannot be a solitary base for conclusions about the position of women. And although modern anthropologists and sociologists agree that matriarchal societies have never existed in this original, evolutionary sense, some scholars still use the terms “matriarchy” and “patriarchy”. However, they do it in a general sense for descriptive, analytical and pedagogical purposes.
Chinese kingdom of women
While no evidence has ever been found to conclusively confirm that matriarchy was indeed a widespread system of governance, we may speak of matrilineal communities. There have been many such systems over the centuries, and one can observe them today too. What are they? Matrylinearism is a kinship system determined along the maternal line. After birth, children become part of the mother’s clan and inherit her family name.
One of the most fascinating matrilineal communities today is Mosuo in southwestern China, on the border of Yunnan and Sichuan provinces. There is no institution of marriage there and women can live openly with any number of partners. They call it “transitional” or “casual” marriage and it is the woman who chooses a man. She has her own “flower chamber” – sometimes it is a room, sometimes a separate house – in which every night she receives her beloved one. Children conceived there belong to the mother’s clan. Usually they do not know who their biological father is and they address men as “uncles”. Children are brought up together.
Despite the strong position of the Mosuo women, power does not reside with them. Decisions are made jointly and the senior female member of the family acts as an adviser.
The news of this extraordinary community spread thanks to a Chinese singer and writer Yang Erche Namu who comes from Mosuo and who in 1997 published the book entitled “Escape from the Kingdom of Daughters”. Namu, when writing about her lush love life, revealed, among other things, the secrets of “flower chambers”. Her literary debut became a bestseller, and the poor and isolated Mosuo settlements became a tourist attraction overnight. Roads, shops, restaurants, hotels and schools were built there. There were filmmakers interested in documenting the lives of Mosuo women and the local folklore. A complete tourist infrastructure was created with the aim of reaping profits and meeting the stereotypical expectations of visitors. The authentic traditions of the Mosuo people have become less and less visible in the colourful, tacky tinsel. Many members of this community (which today numbers only about 40,000 people) decide to move to the city in search of a better life.
Matriarchal utopias
Although the existence of a true matriarchal society is being questioned, the very idea aroused the curiosity of artists. The concept of matriarchy has often been the subject of feminist literary science-fiction utopias. It has been taken up in books by authors such as Joanna Russ, Ursula K. Le Guin and Alice Bradley Sheldon. Interestingly, the latter perversely explored female threads under a male pseudonym – James Tiptree Junior. British classical philologist, Mary Beard, in the book entitled “Women & Power: A Manifesto”, refers to Charlotte Perkins Gilman's novel “Herland” from 1915 which is a fantasy about a women's state. “Women live there in a wonderful utopia: clean and orderly, communal, peace-loving – even cats have stopped hunting birds – perfectly organised in every way: from sustainable agriculture and delicious food to social welfare and education. And it's all about one miraculous innovation: at the dawn of history, the founder mothers somehow perfected the process of parthenogenesis [a method of reproduction involving the development of offspring from an egg without sperm]”, writes Beard, revealing that the main thread of Gilman's novel is the appearance of three men in Herland and its consequences. In Beard's opinion, the book asks important questions about the perception of the rule of women or women wielding power or striving for it and prompts reflection on the cultural foundations of misogyny in politics and at work.
Film directors have also often used matriarchal themes. As the film critic Magdalena Maksimiuk notices, communities dominated and ruled by women were mostly set by filmmakers – just like in literature – in the science fiction genre. “The most common is the idea of a tribe that lives somewhere outside the Earth, in distant galaxies. On the other hand, there were many strong, self-assured heroines in cinema in the last decades. However, they were always shown as individuals. In this light, Polish Sexmission is important as in this work the entire existing society was composed entirely of women and built entirely by women. And this is not actually seen in movies or series”, says Maksimiuk, who points to two more contemporary productions that have recently had a wide impact in the film world. “The 2017 movie Wonder Woman by Patty Jenkins and its sequel Wonder Woman 1984, which is set to be released soon. Let's take a look at how women are shown there. We are mainly dealing with a tribe of warlike Amazons created to defend mankind, so we draw on old tradition and mythology. This kind of image does not reflect a contemporary matriarchal society. Patty Jenkins's film definitely challenges the stagnant hierarchies that function in societies, but also makes a reference to our cultural awareness. So it's hard to tell whether what we see is a matriarchal community. On the other hand, a very strong heroine was placed at the forefront and she became in a way an icon of this new opening to women's cinema”, says the critic.
Women's path to power
At a time when women's communities seem to be growing stronger than ever and the question of their contribution to society is becoming the subject of a global debate, the idea of matriarchy is gaining ground.
The Gender Equality Index by the European Institute for Gender Equality (EIGE) shows that “power” is the area where there has been the greatest increase in female participation in the last ten years. However, although there are more and more women in high positions, they are still in the minority. And although they make up roughly half of the world's population, they only hold a quarter of political positions, and political parity is still an unattainable dream in many countries.
Rwanda, which has the highest proportion of women in power, definitely deviates from this norm. Women make up almost 62% of the local legislature. How come? A country that was recovering after the civil war needed a new constitution. And the constitution written and ratified in 2003 included a certain provision: that women must hold at least 30 percent of seats in legislative bodies. Mary Beard is rather distrustful of this large female representation and wonders if this means that the actual power in Rwanda is exercised outside of parliament.
The statistics compiled by the Polish Senate show that as of July 2019, only four countries have at least 50 percent women in unicameral parliaments or in lower houses. Apart from the aforementioned Rwanda, these are Cuba (53.2%), Bolivia (53.1%) and Andorra (50%).
Data published in the report prepared in 2019 by the European Parliament, entitled “Women in politics: A global perspective”, show a positive tendency in the presence of women in parliaments and governments. Although, as the authors point out, “there is still a lot of work to be done to ensure an equal presence of both genders in the decision-making process.” Both the European Union and the United Nations support gender equality in politics by seeking to increase women's participation in leadership.
Mary Beard points out in her book that, after all, “our mental, cultural model of strength still remains predominantly masculine.” Cultural stereotypes are so firmly embedded in us that it is difficult for us to associate the figure of a woman with the position of a president. “You can't easily fit women into a structure that has been programmed as masculine from the beginning – you have to change that structure”, writes Beard.
According to the philologist, we should start by changing the perception of power, separating it from prestige, thinking about the power of a group in which everyone is taken seriously. Above all, we should begin to think “of power as an attribute, or even a verb (to rule), and not something you have.”.
Sources: National Geographic, “Women & Power: A Manifesto” by Mary Beard, “Brakująca połowa dziejów” by Anna Kowalczyk
Author: Justyna Grochal
The text was published in "Wysokie Obcasy" from 22 August 2020.
