There are a number of tribes in our modern world that are labeled as matriarchal. This has occurred because members of the tribe felt that this would be in the best interest for their communities’ survival. Reeves, an anthropologist in field research on matriarchal tribes indicates that, when the theory of matriarchal societies first came to be, they were defined as “opposite to patriarchy." To clarify, the term opposite was in reference to tribes being dominated by women, in the same way men in the 20th century dominated society and their female counterparts. This mistaken theory about how societies led by women would be, led to anthropologists coming up with no real life example of matriarchy societies. To date, no community has been found where women rule in the way 20th century men dominated Western society. For this reason, many anthropologists in recent years have moved away from utilizing the term “matriarchy” to define women ruled clans and instead, utilize labels such as “matristic”, “matricentric”, “matrifocal”, for example. In these societies, it has been found that both sexes are often on equal footing, they are linked, rather than ranked, and in a form of partnership (Reeves Sanday, 2002).

One modern day tribe where women rule is the ethnic minority group that can be found high in the Himalayan region, and follow a mostly agrarian economy. This clan has no written language, therefore, historical documentation does not exist to trace the history of this tribe. They are mentioned in writings from multiple Asian societies throughout different parts of history. There are three major aspects of Mosuo culture that attract the attention of researchers and tourists. The first of these is that they follow a matriarchal or “matrilineal” system, second, they follow a walking marriage system and, third, they have successfully integrated their own “Daba” religion with Buddhism. In this society, women are at the head of the household. Property is passed through them, as well as the family lineage, and they make the big business decisions. Surprisingly enough, they leave the political decisions to the men in the clan (LLM CDA, 2006).

Although matriarchal orders are not very common, it is not uncommon for religions to have aspects of different cultures, so, objectively speaking, the oddest of the three aspects is that of the “walking marriage”. In their writing, Lu and Sam indicate that “traditional marriage ceremonies” do not exist within the clan. They simply refer to their relationships as “sisi”, translating to walking back and forth. Another term they use is that of the “azhu hunyin”, meaning “friend marriage”.

The process begins when a girl reaches the age of 12 years old, she then has a coming of age ceremony and is then free to be with whichever man she pleases. When she has a child, the father and his brothers help care for the infant, but are not required to, as they care for the women and elder men in their own families. Lovers will continue to live in separate households and will decide to end the relationship when the sparks die out. Fighting is not a common occurrence between lovers in this clan, because they keep their lives completely separate and feel no obligation to remain together (Yuan & Mitchell, 2000).

Historic records that mention the Mosuo tribe indicate that this society used to have a feudal system, where there were rich individuals, who exerted their power over poorer individuals; during these times, the tribe was patriarchal. In contrast to that time period, modern traditions indicate that the lineage must maintain a matriarchy. Researchers found that when a family does not have a female to take the role of future matriarch, a woman will be “adopted” from another family to become head of that household.

It is theorized that the reason behind this is stemmed from a cultural belief that the need for power and leadership is biologically male, while women are biologically capable of being in a system of equal opportunity and support. For this reason, families in the poorer class began to appoint women to the head of the household, in order to collectively rid their society of patriarchy (LLM CDA, 2006). It is surprising to see how contrasting a matriarchal society is to that of a patriarchal society, because we are so accustomed to there being social classes. We are used to having the utmost respect and some fear for the male leader of the household, and to see monogamous ruling relationships. Although, many people may look at this clan as odd, or even ungodly, the way they run such a peaceful seeming society is very admirable, especially with all the conflicts we are exposed to today.

References:

LLM CDA. (2006). Lugu Lake Mosuo cultural development association. Retrieved from http://www.mosuoproject.org/mosuo.htm

Reeves Sanday, P. (2002). Women at the center: Life in a modern matriarchy (2002 ed.). Retrieved from https://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=yeG9UGz4_08C&oi=fnd&pg=PR9&dq=matriarchy&ots=vsS_M9yOjY&sig=gD9LPsdltrMaEnx-dXk6maXbd0Q#v=onepage&q=matriarchy&f=false

Yuan, L., & Mitchell, S. (2000). Land of the walking marriage. Natural history, 109(9), 58-61. Retrieved from http://www3.gettysburg.edu/~dperry/Class%20Readings%20Scanned%20Documents/Intro/Yuan.pdf