On the Inevitability of Patriarchy
Despite societies like the Mosuo’s in which women are autonomous and play crucial roles in maintaining social and economic stability, and plentiful evidence from dozens of foraging societies in which females enjoy high status and respect, many scientists rigidly insist that all societies are and always have been patriarchal. In Why Men Rule (originally titled The Inevitability of Patriarchy), sociologist Steven Goldberg provides an example of this absolutist view, writing, “Patriarchy is universal…. Indeed, of all social institutions there is probably none whose universality is so totally agreed upon…. There is not, nor has there ever been, any society that even remotely failed to associate authority and leadership in suprafamilial areas with the male. There are no borderline cases.”13 Strong words. Yet, in 247 pages, Goldberg fails to mention the Mosuo even once.
Goldberg does mention the Minangkabau of West Sumatra, Indonesia, but only in an appendix, where he cites two passages from others’ research. The first, dating to 1934, says that men are generally served food before women. From this, Goldberg concludes that males wield superior power in Minangkabau society. This is as logically consistent as concluding that Western societies must be matriarchal because men often hold doors open for women, allowing them to pass first. The second passage Goldberg cites is from a paper co-authored by anthropologist Peggy Reeves Sanday, suggesting that the Minangkabau men have some degree of authority in the application of various aspects of traditional law.
Minangkabau woman and girls (Photo: Christopher Ryan)14
There are two big problems with Goldberg’s application of Sanday’s work. First, there is no inherent contradiction between claiming that a society is not patriarchal and yet that men do enjoy various types of authority. This is simply illogical: Van Gogh’s famous painting The Starry Night is not a “yellow painting,” though there is plenty of yellow in it. The second problem with this citation is that Peggy Reeves Sanday, the anthropologist Goldberg cites, has consistently argued that the Minangkabau are matriarchal. In fact, her most recent book about the Minangkabau is called Women at the Center: Life in a Modern Matriarchy.15
Having spent over twenty summers living among the Minangkabau, Sanday says, “The power of Minangkabau women extends to the economic and social realms,” noting, for example, that women control land inheritance and that a husband typically moves into the wife’s household. The four million Minangkabau living in West Sumatra consider themselves to be a matriarchal society. “While we in the West glorify male dominance and competition,” Sanday says, “the Minangkabau glorify their mythical Queen Mother and cooperation.” She reports that “males and females relate more like partners for the common good than like competitors ruled by egocentric self-interest,” and that as with bonobo social groups, women’s prestige increases with age and “accrues to those who promote good relations….”16
As happens so often in trying to understand and discuss other cultures, wording trips up specialists. When they claim never to have found a “true matriarchy,” these anthropologists are envisioning a mirror image of patriarchy, a vision that ignores the differing ways males and females conceptualize and wield power. Sanday says that among the Minangkabau, for example, “Neither male nor female rule is possible because of [their] belief that decision-making should be by consensus.” When she kept asking people which sex ruled, she was finally told that she was asking the wrong question. “Neither sex rules … because males and females complement one another.”17
Remember this when some loudmouth at the bar declares that “patriarchy is universal, and always has been!” It’s not, and it hasn’t. But rather than feel threatened, we’d recommend that our male readers ponder this: Societies in which women have lots of autonomy and authority tend to be decidedly male-friendly, relaxed, tolerant, and plenty sexy. Got that, fellas? If you’re unhappy at the amount of sexual opportunity in your life, don’t blame the women. Instead, make sure they have equal access to power, wealth, and status. Then watch what happens.
As with bonobos, where female coalitions are the ultimate social authority and individual females need not fear the larger males, human societies in which women are “sassy and confident,” as Barnes described the Mosuo girls—free to express their minds and sexuality without fear of shame or persecution—tend to be far more comfortable places for most men than societies ruled by a male elite. Maybe matriarchal societies are so difficult for Western male anthropologists to recognize because they expect a culture where men are suffering under the high heels of women—a reverse reflection of the long-standing male oppression of women in Western cultures. Instead, observing a society where most of the men are lounging about relaxed and happy, they conclude they’ve found yet another patriarchy, thereby missing the point entirely.