Do you believe we are becoming a matriarchal society?

We are not at any real equality between the sexes, let alone matriarchy. When women gain rights, men do not lose theirs. And I’d like to add – I don’t get (not saying this is what you’re doing) why the knee-jerk reaction to egalitarianism in society is paranoia about matriarchy – hardly does anyone take that same amount of time to consider the patriarchal society we actually live in and what the consequences of existing patriarchy are.

@Simone_De_Beauvoir I’m sure with more women being in positions of authority that will start changing. There are more women in college than men, women seem to be doing better in school as well. There does seem to be a turning trend here, maybe you don’t see it now but with way things are going it may be very perceivable that a matriarchal society may be in store in the distant or even near future.

No, I would not say we are heading towards a matriarchal society. I think society is headed more and more towards brains, not brawn, being sought after, and so women more and more have an equal footing.

@Jabe73 About education, I wonder how those numbers really break down? My guess is lower socio-economic groups might drastically influence the mean average of who is getting educated. I wonder if you separate people out by social class how it breaks down? My guess is poor women are pursuing education, while poor men seem to be dropping out of school more and more. I don’t think this will have a big effect regarding women in power, although it does have other societal implications. That is if I am right in my assumptions about the stats. Do you have any information regarding that?

Also, there is a push in primary and secondary school to gear education so it would be better suited for teaching boys.

As long as religion exists I don’t think there’s much chance of society evolving into something more matriarchal.

We’re certainly not there yet. Look at the top positions in almost any area of power and you’ll see mostly men.

In any event, trying to judge the end result during times of change is very difficult. E.g. you mention there are more women in college than men. But the numbers are heavily skewed. E.g. MIT is about 50% women despite only about a quarter of their students being female. I’m quite certain this happens in other technical areas as well. I’m not saying this is good or bad, but just pointing out how a quick glance at the numbers can be misleading.

@roundsquare I am not sure I understand your education stat. You said MIT is 50% women, but only 25% are female?? Did you leave something out? Maybe a particular major?

@roundsquare More women are the breadwinner now, but that’s because since men are still paid more, it was more economical for employers to lay off a man than a woman.

I have read some articles about this (even by some women), watched about some of this on tv and even hear many people I work with talk about this. I do not have any belief myself this is/or will happen. I personally do not believe we are becoming a matriarchal society. These are points I always hear guys and girls around me talk about. I personally do not see a future matriarchy but more opportunities for females. I just wonder what other people who don’t live near me in other walks of life think of this.

Well let’s hope so, it’s our turn and we couldn’t possibly screw anything up more than the males have been doing since the beginning of time.

@papayalily More women than men are breadwinners? Or, more women are becoming breadwinners compared to years past?

@Jabe73 It’s in the media right now, especially the female political candidates running in upcoming elections.

@JLeslie More women are currently employed than men right now for the first time ever. Women currently account for 51% of the workforce.

@papayalily Interesting. I wonder how that breaks down by industry, socio-economics, career level? I once heard that women are more willing to be underemploed (take jobs “beneath” their previous job) so during times of economic crisis and major layoff, men hold out for the similar jobs and salary, while women get back to work in some form or another. Not sure if that is the case really? More women working, is not the same as more women being breadwinners. Also, isn’t there more women than men in the US?

@papayalily This says 30% http://www.redorbit.com/news/health/1790971/female_breadwinners_bring_home_tension/index.html still high.

I want to see us get to equality in my lifetime.
I don’t fear women running things, I just do see us approaching that very soon.

Only in a world of Male insecurity would the, frankly, strange concept of a matriarchy gain credence, as some kind of nightmare dystopia. Most likely this would come to past only within your own head, it is a perceptual problem rather than a social reality.

Agreed, @mammal

It’s especially funny when you look at matriarchal societies throughout history. They’re almost universally peaceful, prosperous, self-sufficient entities. The Iroquois, for example.

I think we’re slowly getting closer to equality, yet I don’t see the U.S. tracing lineage through the mother’s line anytime soon. There are sections that do, yet I don’t see it becoming ‘for all’ within the next few hundred years.

Women hold 49.83% of the US workforce as of June, 2010. However, women hold more part-time jobs, and make 77% of what men make. When there are layoffs it’s less likely that a woman will be laid off than a man, because women will do the same work as a man, but for less money.

Among 2009 high school graduates, 73.8% of female graduates were enrolled in college, as compared to 66% male. Female college students were slightly more likely to be working or looking for work while in college.

Women are thought to be better at multi-tasking than men, which makes them indispensable in the workforce because they can get more done, juggle more projects. However, men tend to rise in management because single focus allows for being successful at completing a single project in a more contained manner.

I personally think electronic media is the undoing of males, coupled with an erosion of male social patterning opportunities. In other words, too much time with video games, not enough time in activities such as boy scouts, sports teams, etc.

We have a long way to go before women are even equal much less dominant even though, in sheer numbers, we make up a larger portion of the population at least in the US. That being said, men have a bad tendency to kill each other and themselves (war, murder, car accidents, risk-taking behavior) so who knows, maybe peace and prosperity is in our collective future (er, those who survive to see it, I mean).

Matriarchy is impossible under capitalism. It works like this:

For about two million years prior to the rise of agrarianism, our genus has been either anarchic, matriarchal, or both. This occurs as a result of biology: we are driven by libido (in the Freudian sense of the term) to pursue genetically-superior offspring. In any species, the sex which devotes the most of its resources to the offspring does the choosing, while the other sex does the competing. In humans, women contribute the most resources to offspring, so they are responsible for selecting among men for superior genes. (This all occurs on an unconscious level of course; all the female is aware of is that Strong, Handsome Hunter makes her loins moist and receptive while Pale, Sickly Runt does not.) Since any number of females can share a single desirable male, there need be no competition for mates – all can have his genes who want them for her offfspring.

So far so good. Then came the Agrarian Revolution.

As hunter-gatherers, there not only is no such thing has property, but even the concept of property is impossible. No one saves resources for later because there’s neither need for it nor ability to do so. When resources run short in any given area, the hunter-gatherer simply moves to a different location. Then people discover how to grow their own crops and suddenly you have an extremely different set of needs. The community can no longer leave, so seeds must be saved from year to year in order to sow next year’s crops. These seeds must be protected between seasons, or the community starves and dies. Since women are too valuable to risk as guards, only males can be permitted to become soldiers (since so long as even a single male survives, the community can repopulate itself in a single generation).

Valuable warriors must now find some way of guaranteeing their genes will propagate. Since the only way to be absolutely certain it’s your genes at work is to have exclusive access to a desirable female, women must be turned into chattel, property.

And thus the Patriarchy was born, leading ultimately to the oppressive tyranny of worldwide capitalism.

Fortunately, all this is ending. Every few thousand years, humanity reinvents itself as the current “operating system” of the human brain becomes incapable of handling the growing levels of complexity. The last time this happened was in the switch from hunter-gatherers to agrarianists, when we invented consciousness and the story-cycle of the Hero (as described by Joseph Campbell and Carl Jung), characterized by extreme individualism and male domination. This was necessary because a sense of personal identity is required to enable the specializationation needed for a city to exist. (This phenomenon is described in detail in Julian Jaynes’ Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind.) Now, we know from rapidly-accelerating levels of dysfunction in the form of autism, sociopathy, depression, and manic-depression that the consciousness required for a paleolithic city is no longer sufficient for a modern Industrial Age megolopolis. The story cycle of the Hero, the idealized Randian individualist, is coming to its end even as we speak. Capitalism is crumbling all around us, even as the Patriarch struggles to prolong his tired, dysfunctional reign.

I for one am looking forward to the revolution in consciousness which is looming before us, not at all coincidentally as we also see the Singularity closing in on us, the point at which the curve of technology goes vertical and we become essentially our own Gods.

@Jabe73 I don’t see a problem with women being in positions of authority or doing better in schools (another ‘issue’ I don’t see as such because I resent the fact that there needs to be a comparison of who does what better when it comes to genders and why one must bemoan any result that shows women do something better when no one discusses the privilege given to men upon birth simply for being so) – this has nothing to do with a shift to matriarchy because such a shift is a fundamental shift to society and rarely does that happen in a sexist, patriarchal society unless women are to cease power in some violent way or extreme way and impose this system. And I, as a feminist and an activist, would oppose this.

@SmashTheState Far out, bro.

Also worth reading is The Alphabet vs The Goddess by Leonard Shlain. Dark times are often more egalitarian.

Nah. Maybe that’s a good thing.

No, I don’t see it happening anytime soon. The men in power in the world are not giving it up, especially to women. A lot of men are sexist and have an unconscious hatred toward women that stems from a domineering abusive mother during their childhood and giving power to a women would be the last thing they’d want to do.
We’re lucky to even be equals in a sense in this day and age. It’s been less than 100 years since women have gained any real rights in the world. Make that less than 50 years so we still have a long way to go.

@HoneyBee I don’t think sexism has to do with domineering abusive mothers but some mothers being domineering and abusive might have to do with sexism in their lives.

@JLeslie Sorry, I missed a word. 25% of applicants are female. My bad.

@papayalily Good point. Another reason why its hard to judge where things are going by just a cursory look at the numbers.

@roundsquare 25% are applicants, but the student body is 50% female? So the women are getting accepted more often? Are their applications better, or are the schools just favoring women? I think I missed the point of that stat. I remember hearing on some show that more men as a whole are accepted to universities, but more women graduate. Not sure if that is accurate, and I heard it probably 6 ot 7 years ago.

@SmashTheState I think I understand what you said (LOL), but I gave you GA for effort.

While it is unlikely to occur under our capitalist, patriarchal society, if we all woke up tomorrow with women running the country (although preferably not Sarah Palin), I believe the world could accelerate progress towards goals long discussed but never achieved.

This is not because women think so differently or have more desirable attributes, but because a fresh start would be better than the status quo.

I would be willing to see what happens. They could hardly do much worse!

@Simone_De_Beauvoir – It doesn’t matter either way, you get my point.

@Dr_Lawrence I think it says a lot that the woman that has come the closest to the White House was Sarah Palin, and not Hilary Clinton.

America still greatly favors the conservative/sexual woman who knows her “place”, defers to her husband, and knows how to cook whatever her husband might bring home from the hunt.

It actually rather sickens me, that at this point in the evolution of mankind, we as women are still widely considered to be servants.

@JLeslie The female applications may well be better, but I doubt to the degree to give such a statistic. In this case, a female student is 3 times as likely to be accepted as a male student. Thats quite a difference right there. Also, as far as I know, MIT does make an effort to have about the same number of males and females.

Again, not saying its good or bad, but trying to point out the difficulty in using the simple statistics to draw conclusions.

@roundsquare Yes, I was pointing out the same thing in my answer.

@Seek_Kolinahr – good point and GA

@Seek_Kolinahr I find that disturbing myself. I cook and clean myself anyway and actually prefer to cook my own meals since I am picky in what I eat anyway. I prefer equality in any relationship. I think traditional gender roles suck as well. There are many guys I know of that are the opposite of me on that one however.

I do believe something else however, even if a so called “matriarchy” would occur I do not believe much would change for most men anyway. Men will still always make up the majority of nations armed forces, do construction and maintenance jobs, doing the dirty jobs and I still do not think dating roles/philosophy would change much either.

No. We are becoming a society of equal opportunities.