Goddesses, warrior women and queen mothers existed. But what does history actually tell us about matriarchy?

In episode 1, we began with the most basic but necessary question: what do people actually mean when they say matriarchy?

And yes I know these early episodes are giving “please read the terms and conditions,” but the foundation matters. Before we debate whether a matriarchy would work, whether it would be better than patriarchy or whether we should create one, we need to know what we are talking about. So, in this episode, I am asking the next obvious question.

The answer partly depends on what we expect a matriarchy to look like. If we define it as the opposite of patriarchy, we might search for a society in which women held ultimate power over its political, economic and social institutions. But many supporters of matriarchy reject the idea that it would simply reproduce patriarchy with women in charge. Instead, they describe power as maternal, collective, shared, decentralised or based on consensus. That leaves us with two questions:

Have women ever held the kind of structural power historically held by men under patriarchy?

Have women exercised substantial and protected authority through institutions organised in a completely different way?

A society does not need to have women ruling over men for women to hold real power. But we still need to identify what that power allowed women to do: what they could decide, control, prevent or enforce, whether men could override them and which women were allowed to exercise that authority.

This is where the definition problem from episode 1 becomes impossible to avoid. The word matriarchy has been used to describe:

• women governing;

• descent passing through the female line;

• families living near the woman’s relatives;

• mother-centred societies;

• female religious authority;

• women and men holding different but complementary forms of power;

• gender equality;

• and societies organised around care or consensus.

Some of these arrangements may overlap, but they are not the same. Descent passing through women does not prove that women governed, just as female deities do not tell us what ordinary women were allowed to decide. A queen mother may hold real authority without all women sharing that power, and women participating in warfare does not prove that women controlled the wider society. At the same time, the absence of a female king or queen does not mean women had no structural power if they exercised authority through land, lineage, succession, councils or other institutions. I think, different definitions do not simply give us different answers; they lead us to ask completely different historical questions.

So, where do we begin when looking for evidence that matriarchies existed in the past? One useful starting point is Johann Jakob Bachofen’s 1861 book Das Mutterrecht, or Mother Right, because it influenced how later scholars searched for female-centred prehistoric societies (Archaeological Dialogues). His idea of “mother-right” included maternal descent, rights and authority, not simply women ruling men (English translation of Mother Right). However, his theory was built largely from mythology, classical writing, religious symbols and ancient legal traditions rather than modern archaeological evidence (Princeton University Press). His work does not prove that prehistoric matriarchies existed, but it helps us understand where one influential search for them began.

I also wondered while carrying out the research why some societies repeatedly presented as possible matriarchies while others are rarely discussed? It looks as if, the most ‘popular’ examples of study became prominent through particular traditions of anthropology, archaeology, colonial encounter and later advocacy. I think it’s useful to note also that a community may organise itself through maternal descent and complementary leadership without calling itself matriarchal, while outside researchers and advocates may apply that label and make broader claims about how it operated. There are also likely to be societies that could reasonably be described as matriarchal but never entered the historical record, as well as others whose surviving evidence is too limited for researchers to identify.

Could archaeology help us work out whether matriarchal societies existed before written records? The evidence reveals maternal line communities, possible matrilocal residence and forms of female prominence that challenge the assumption that all prehistoric societies were organised around men (Nature; Evolutionary Human Sciences). However, it does not establish that women collectively governed or organised an entire society according to matriarchal principles. Here were some examples I could find:

At Çatalhöyük, in present-day Turkey, archaeologist James Mellaart interpreted female figurines as evidence of Mother Goddess worship. Later excavations found a wider range of figurines and signs of broadly equal diets and living conditions, supporting the possibility of an egalitarian society but not proving that women governed (Archaeological Dialogues).

Archaeologist Marija Gimbutas used figurines and other remains to describe “Old Europe” as female-centred and broadly egalitarian. Her work remains influential, but archaeologists dispute whether female imagery proves goddess worship or reveals how power was organised, so the society she described has not been established by the evidence (Archaeological Dialogues).

Women often point to goddesses, female warriors and queen mothers as evidence that matriarchal societies existed in the past. These examples also appeared repeatedly in the research, rather than being examples I selected myself. So I wanted to look more closely at what they actually tell us about women’s power - and whether their existence proves that women governed. Here are some examples:

Women feature prominently in Minoan art and may have held religious authority. But the evidence does not prove that women governed Crete, so female prominence cannot automatically be treated as evidence of matriarchy (Cambridge University Press).

Greek stories described societies of warrior women, and archaeology confirms that some Scythian women were buried with weapons. This proves that armed women existed, but not that they governed exclusively female societies (Antiquity).

Asante queen mothers have historically held recognised authority alongside male chiefs, including helping to nominate leaders. Their continuing role in Ghana provides evidence of female institutional power within a matrilineal and complementary system, but not a society controlled entirely by women (Michigan State University; JSTOR).

Just as a side note, you may notice several Cambridge sources throughout this piece. Cambridge University Press publishes international archaeology research by scholars based at institutions around the world. Two sources also come from the same recent discussion in Archaeological Dialogues, so they are related contributions rather than completely independent sources.

At this point, I want to let you know that this work revealed that researchers have not always looked for the same evidence. Some searched for women holding political power similar to men under patriarchy, while others studied maternal descent, female religious authority or mother-centred societies. Many supporters of matriarchy reject the idea that it means patriarchy with women in charge. I take that distinction seriously, but what power might look like in female hands needs an episode of its own.

So all in all, history by itself does not give us one proven matriarchal system waiting to be restored. That does not mean a modern matriarchy could not be created, but its supporters would need to explain what they are actually proposing: female rule, equal representation, shared authority, mother- or child-centred institutions, consensus government or freedom from gender hierarchy.

They would also need to answer practical questions: who holds power, how leaders are chosen and removed, how decisions are enforced, what rights men and minorities have, and what happens when women disagree. The gaps in the historical record leave room for imagination, but designing a new system also brings responsibility. I will explore some of these questions more fully in a future episode.

So, if history does not give us one blueprint, we should not expect one global model of matriarchy either. Culture, class, religion, history and political beliefs will shape what women imagine and how they believe it should work. Women living in different cultural, religious and political contexts may have very different ideas about what matriarchy should mean and how it should work. We should also remember that many of the societies discussed in this research have been described by scholars who are not members of those communities, so their interpretations may not fully reflect how the people themselves understand their way of life.

Just as we have not found one universal definition or one proven historical model of matriarchy, it makes sense that any future versions would also develop differently across the world. That is not automatically good or bad, but it is something we need to acknowledge when we talk about matriarchy because women are not a monolith and as citizens of the world, we don’t have the same worldview.

The answer is not a simple yes or no. I could not find one widely accepted historical example of women collectively holding ultimate authority across society. However, I did find matrilineal and matrilocal societies, women holding significant political or religious power, and systems where women and men shared authority. Some prehistoric evidence may never be recoverable, but we should not treat those gaps as proof that matriarchy either did or did not exist.

This limited research series was born from a video I made asking, Are women morally superior to men? In that video, I discussed what the belief in women’s moral superiority might mean for a future matriarchy, and the response to that discussion is what led me to begin this inquiry. The question matters because many arguments for matriarchy appear to rest, at least partly, on the belief that women would use power differently because we are “naturally” more caring, peaceful or cooperative and moral than men. In Episode Three, I am returning to that original question and asking whether the evidence actually supports those claims.

I would love to hear what you think. Please share your questions, challenges or observations in the comments, as they may help shape what I explore in future episodes.

With Love, Ashanti - the Unpunishable Woman.