From that point on, his work belongs to the woman’s family, and it’s the woman who decides whether her husband can share his fish, coconuts or plantains with his own parents or siblings.
Taken together, these two observations make a lot of sense. In a closed society where women have consolidated power like that, why would anyone become a man?
Japan is generally viewed as a heavily patriarchal society, yet has similar customs. For example, a typical couple's bank account is controlled by the wife.
It doesn't seem quite that unreasonable question to ask.
* Organising and directing the hunters, and dividing their kill.
* The power to declare war, and to divide the spoils.
* Powers relating to treaties and trade with other tribes.
* Adjudicating disputes between families.
The chief and his retinue are often the only recognisable political offices in such societies, in the sense that:
* There is an open and explicit process for selecting the office holder.
* Everyone openly acknowledges their authority.
* They make open proclamations with regards to their rules and determinations.
* They are held accountable for their decisions and their outcomes.
They constitute the public, universal aspect of power — formal authority. This is not the only kind of power possible.
As an earlier poster notes, in most East Asian societies from time immemorial women held the purse strings. Many societies are organised in such a way, that women have great power in aggregate but men hold the official, political positions. Susan Carol Rogers’ “The Myth of Male Dominance: Female Forms of Power” explores this dynamic in French peasant society. Patriarchy and women being in practice more powerful can co-exist.
There are virtually (actually?) no matriarchies in history or on the earth today, in the sense that women hold the majority of positions where power is open, accountable and governed by law (or custom). In most historical societies, women held none of these positions. That doesn’t mean they just rolled over and played dead while men ran riot with the power.
Perhaps as modernity got underway, the official power of men became much more significant. It wasn’t always the case that getting a new road in your town required approval at the state/province level. Informal, local power receded from view and it was only reasonable that women sought the formal, political kind in modernising societies. This change also makes it hard for us to recognise the importance of informal power in simpler societies.
I do have a major question however about that list of powers. If a dispute between two families is about marriage, do the male chieftains hold authority to decide on the matter? My guess would be that they do not as that would cross the boundary of power. It sounds more like this society have male gender role that give them official domain over war and trade with other tribes, and a female gender role that give them domain over all other areas. This would be very similar to many other tribal societies, with the rare exception that allow individuals to choose which one of the two roles a person want. Many people object to this classification since it would mean that most historical societies are neither matriarchy or patriarchy but rather structured around gender roles where power is held supreme with in each gender group.
In that situation most of the formal power was held by men. The members of parliament, the generals, the treasurer, the postmaster, the judges -- all were men.
If a dispute between two families is about marriage, do the male chieftains hold authority to decide on the matter? My guess would be that they do not as that would cross the boundary of power.
It is possible chiefs hold power in that area because marriage is a matter of official, formal record. Having power doesn't mean they don't have to take into account the informal power around them. This is the difference relative to modern societies -- the balance of power between formal and informal power.
It sounds more like this society have male gender role that give them official domain over war and trade with other tribes, and a female gender role that give them domain over all other areas. This would be very similar to many other tribal societies, with the rare exception that allow individuals to choose which one of the two roles a person want. Many people object to this classification since it would mean that most historical societies are neither matriarchy or patriarchy but rather structured around gender roles where power is held supreme with in each gender group.
When a society is labeled patriarchal it is not, in practice, a statement about all the power in that society. It's hard for anthropologists and historians to gather that information. It's a statement about formal, political power -- about offices which people can be procedurally added to and removed from, in an open and accountable way. There are some societies were women had substantial institutions like this. In modernized liberal democracies -- for maybe the first time in history? -- women participate in men's institutions to a substantial degree, and that is pretty much their only gateway into public life. Matriarchy is the idea -- perhaps comical on the face of it, because anything so symmetrical in its construction should be suspicious, but it was not so back when people were asking this question -- that women would be the presidents and generals and judges and men would basically chill at home and smoke the fish and do the knitting and not (overtly) control public policy. No one has ever found a society like this.
The time when the queens power were supreme the parliament did not hold power over the monarch, nor did the generals, treasurer, postmasters or judges. Supreme power is supreme. The UK parliament was created on the idea to limit the power of the monarch, same with the treasurer which reported only to the parliament, but those rules took ages to be put in place.
> Having power doesn't mean they don't have to take into account the informal power around them.
There is a very strong issue of definition here. A supreme judge have to take into account the facts of a case but they still hold exclusive power to make a judgement. That is the question here: do the chiefs hold the exclusive power to decide the case or are they not allowed to do so when it cross over to the domain that women decide on.
> When a society is labeled patriarchal it is not, in practice, a statement about all the power in that society.
That is why the term patriarchal and matriarchy is about which group holds primary power. Not all, but most power.
> that women would be the presidents and generals and judges and men would basically chill at home and smoke the fish and do the knitting and not (overtly) control public policy. No one has ever found a society like this.
This is just a different way of defining formal power to be more meaningful than informal. We could role reversal a society where women held power in all trading, war and negotiation with foreign tribes and men held power over all other domains. Both men and women would do cooking, fishing and knitting, but men would control domestic policy while women controlled diplomatic policy.
Is that a matriarchy? In my view no. The primary power in society is not about who control the generals and who is allowed to go and fight wars with neighboring tribes. There is more to tribal society than war.
This means that patriarchy can co-exist with women having considerable or even majority power, when all bases of power are considered.
Sometimes people use the terms in an informal way -- like when talking about the "matriarch" of a Greek family. It's worth asking if those same people would say Greece was matriarchal -- the answer is usually no.
The reason it looks this way is because Western culture has systemic oppositional sexism and views female gender roles as performative and artificial (the way our culture expects women to always be wearing makeup being one of many examples), subsequently trans women are far more salacious of a topic to the general public, whereas trans men are erased because our culture sees them as trying to pull themselves up by their bootstraps from a position of inferiority to a position of power. (That must be it right?!?)
If you’re interested I’d highly recommend the book “Whipping Girl” by Julia Serano.
[0] https://transequality.org/sites/default/files/docs/usts/USTS...
http://eclectic.ss.uci.edu/~drwhite/courses/stdsvars.html
There is a website for browsing the data. Looks a little challenging to use:
http://socscicompute.ss.uci.edu/
After describing some of the early research and theorizing about matriarchies, the Encyclpaedia Britannica states: "The consensus among modern anthropologists and sociologists is that while many cultures bestow power preferentially on one sex or the other, matriarchal societies in this original, evolutionary sense have never existed."