How advanced would a matriarchy be?

[Annie11111]

I've always wondered about this, what if the world had been a matriarchy from the very beginning to this day, what would society look like? In terms of socio-economic systems, philosophy, religion, human rights, science, technology and so on. How much would it differ from today's world?

Btw there is a matriarchal society in China , the Mosuo.

Quite frankly we have no idea what such a society would look like, history would be so altered we would could technically be less advanced then we are now or even more advanced.

You can never have an accurate answer to questions like this, its a bit like asking what would happen if I time travelled and stepped on a bug: answer = who knows.

Than*

I think the quote about 'if the world were run by women we'd still be living in grass huts' was Camille Paglia, who calls herself a feminist but IMO disqualifies herself from any meaningful feminism by her transparent contempt for other women.

What presumptions can we actually make?

humans want to procreate. Is that a non-negotiable in any of our imagined worlds? So men and women would have to have contact at some point. would that contact only be for procreation? Would men live separately from women and children? Would men support their children once born?

Men are on the whole physically stronger than women. do we think that patriarchal society stems from the fact that women know they are the mother of their child but men don't know for sure but they have a need to know that it is their own genes they are investing energy in so need to control women to prevent being cuckolded?

How would we get to this matriarchal society if we presume the above?

Would it need to be that men took on the childrearing role, staying close to home, pounding the cassava while women go out to hunt?

Argh. I can't imagine how this world would emerge.

Depending how far back we go we would have to become highly aggressive to survive. The migration from being herbivores to omnivores requires the use of tools and aggression. For a matriarchy to take control it would have to happen then as that was the start of tribalism and families. Allowing for size we would need to be better armed or religion as previously mentioned. Religion though is about the survival of the tribe so it would have to be the better tool.

The only other key point would be the need to stay in the same place when we first started agriculture and domestication of animals. After that society has become too structured to keep the power in a limited number of hands based on wealth and/or power especially military. Any mother would fight to her last breath for her kids and this would be used to justify wars over food and land. Certainly the few women who have led in the past were willing to fight. Is it a necessity for survival? I believe so as things like water sources and fertile land have been fought over and I cannot see one giant tribe all following exactly the same religion.

Petula, I am sorry. I totally missed your reply.

I don't know about the deep historical past, but my aunt-in-law received her inheritance, a house and parcel of land, upon her marriage in 1972-ish. That land is still in her name and her name alone. The land title of that property was previously in the sole name of her married grandmother (who had recently died), who had inherited it from her married mother, so we are looking at female title going back to the late 19th century at least.

Interestingly, this is now causing some issues as my aunt-in-law wants to leave the land to her grandsons, and her daughter is extremely unhappy about it (read: flaming rows over the matter), though the daughter also received a property upon her marriage in the late 80s and also has now holds legal title on two more of her parents' properties.

I should probably point out here that the multiple property-owning thing isn't an issue of wealth in the way it would be in Britain. Indeed, up until the noughties, a lot of this land and property was practically worthless. The accumulation comes, instead, from this inheritance system where land and property never passed out of the family (and is not taxed upon death) and parents also "owe" a daughter an "inherited" house upon marriage, and sometimes find they need to purchase one because there isn't a family house spare, or the daughter simply will not live in the one that is spare (because it is, say, half way up a mountain with only feral goats as neighbours).

Any way, my own mother-in-law also received the title to a property upon marriage, previously in the name of her married mother (I don't know where she got it from). She sold this property and bought another, which is also in her name alone -- though she explains this by saying it was not advantageous at the time to allow people to think there was a British citizen (my father-in-law) involved in the transaction. According to her will, this property will be divided between my DH and my sil upon her death.