Allan Milne Lees, here’s yet another article that I just happened upon further supporting what I’ve been saying:
“Dr. Goettner-Abendroth has agreed that matriarchies will by definition never be found if one is looking simply for a society in which women take the “ruling” role of men that characterizes patriarchal societies. But this she argues is because a matriarchy will not be based on domination by any gender, but upon maternal values which will exhibit as caretaking and nurturing negotiation-oriented communities, with complementary equality for women and men alike.
So understood, she has found “abundant evidence” for the existence of many matriarchal societies, to be found today in Asia, America, and Africa. All, she notes, are “ gender egalitarian societies , {Be sure to click on and read this link also} and many of them are fully egalitarian”, with “no hierarchies, classes, nor domination of one gender by the other”. Most academics exclude egalitarian societies from the concept of “matriarchy”. In my view, they are mistaken in doing so.
Importantly, the 2015 study also supported the evolutionary advantage that ancient hunter gatherer societies would similarly have enjoyed with egalitarian social structures, providing “the selective context for expanded social networks, cumulative culture, and cooperation among unrelated individuals.” It is with the subsequent transition to agriculture and pastoralism that humans see the emergence of gender inequality, and the domination of patriarchy that now characterizes our Western society.”
