[Glorantha] Matriarchy

[Donald R. Oddy]

In message <Pine.GSO.4.58.0607031924150.25698 at paju.oulu.fi> Mikko Rintasaari writes:

>I'm not sure what you are going for, but here's an example 
>from the real world.
>
>During our parallel to the Viking era (we didn't do the ship 
>raiding thing) the finns were divided into large tribes with 
>no strong central leadership (even on the tribal level). The 
>society mostly centerer around wealthy farmers (big houses 
>and lots of land) as sort of free carls.
>
>In this society it was the top woman of the house (the wife) 
>that wielded the wealth and power. The traditional woman's 
>dress contained much of the ready cash in jewelry, and was 
>impressive and expensive othervice too. The men were often 
>away for weeks or months at a time hunting and fighting, so
>it made sense for the women to be the stowards who bossed 
>the workforse around and run the house.
>
>Parhaps not quite a matriarchy, but one could argue that the 
>women held more wealth and power than the men.

I don't think this is matriarchy at all. It's typical of rural
communities across Europe before the industrial revolution and
I've encountered remnants within my lifetime. It's a division
of labour thing - the man rules outside the house while the
woman rules inside. Even in England when women were legally
little more than chattels upper class women used to run their
husband's houses and all hundreds of staff.

Patriarchy comes from undervaluing work done within the house
and thereby undervaluing women. Women can then be excluded
from important decision making and have reduced legal rights
because they are seen as incompetant. A matriarchy would do 
the reverse.

I'll agree that a lot of the SF/fantasy depictions of matriarchy
are silly but that's because they haven't been thought through.
Then there are others which are satire or reflect an imaginary
golden age for women. I think this is true of some of the early
writing on Esrolia but the more recent stuff I've seen takes a
more sophisticated approach.

-- 
Donald Oddy
http://www.grove.demon.co.uk/