I have been looking at some of the older posts here about matriarchal societies, and they all seem to agree one one thing: the fact that there has never been any major human societies where men were actively placed on a lower pedestal, and women on a higher one. There have been societies where women may be favored for more certain roles, but they still tend to be male dominated. And societies where women have more power are often simply egalitarian in nature, and misinterpreted by outside viewers.
Is this actually true? I simply have a hard time believing that there is literally no known major societies like this.
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The Haudenausaunee (Iroquois) people are/were a matrilineal, matriolocal society.
Clan membership comes through your mother, and when young women were married, the man would come live in his wife’s home with her family. If you wanted to divorce your husband, you just put all his stuff outside. Maternal uncles might serve as male role models or strong male presence over the father.
Individual Land ownership was not a concept, but women were in charge of managing land use strategies and had dominion over home life and where homes would be built or crops would be planted
Men had warrior societies and only men could serve as Chiefs, but they could only be appointed by female elders, and only female elders could make the decision to go to war.
Having male chiefs originally obscured the matriarchal nature of Haudenausaunee society to early colonizers who didn’t always understand that the male chiefs were serving more as spokesman, relaying the decisions of female elders.