From the earliest theories about primitive society, this work explores the hypothesis of an original matrilineal clan in which women would have occupied a central role in socializing the species. A brisk and well-documented narration that explains the transition from a peaceful and egalitarian matriarchal community to a hierarchical, violent, and unequal organization: the birth of patriarchy.
In this making-of Mara Malibrán explains how she wrote When Women Ruled (RBA).
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It is possible that the title of my book, When Women Ruled, will produce a certain surprise; as if, inevitably, the reading of this forceful phrase would trigger an immediate reaction, a question that in itself functions as an answer: where, and at what moment in history, have women organized the life of society, governed politics, the economy, directed wars or arranged the world just as they imagined it? To our knowledge, with proven facts and evidence, never. And then?
The decision to title it that way does not obey a marketing sales suggestion, quite the opposite. It is a firm bet, after two years of work, on the hypothesis that women at the origin of humanity, in distant Prehistory, came to lead and organize human society; but not only that, there is more and more important: as noted, in the last century, the physician and anthropologist Robert Briffault,
the family clan, led by women, was the architect of the socialization of our species.
The impulse that led me to write this book arose from a fascination I felt when immersing myself in the work of naturalist Charles Darwin; his analytical capacity and the tremendous dedication and effort he invested in his work yielded a revolutionary theory that overturned the science of the time: the demonstration that human evolution occurs through natural selection. A rational, scientific, and creative response to a century, the 19th, in which society still believed that the Earth was only a few thousand years old and that that patriarchal and conservative world, founded on the family, had always existed since the origins of humanity.
Darwin crushes the creationist, misogynist, conservative, and religious discourse of the Western bourgeoisie when he states that
“each fold of the human brain has its corresponding analogue in the brain of the orangutan. It is evident that man is built on the same model or archetype as the other mammals”
And the woman? Did this statement include the woman?
The British scientist was clear: the word “man” also encompassed the other half of humanity.
And yet, not everyone thought so; the paradox consisted in that this scientific society, despite beginning to admit the evidence that humans form part of the family of the great apes, continued to think that “man” means what it means: “male”, and that as such the man is unique, the center of the Universe, the great creator and director of humanity, who creates and leads the family since always; by contrast, the woman was born of his rib, therefore she has been and is an appendage, and should not enjoy any rights.
Darwin opened a new path for Western scientific thought; a path along which generations of thinkers would travel. The Swiss jurist Bachofen would be the first to speak of the Matriarchy, he would give it its name. He would contend that before the patriarchal world there existed another civilization led by women, governed by maternal law; his sources are Greek scholars and myths, which he understands as the tale that explains the ancient world; and then would come a long list of thinkers (Morgan, Engels, Lafarge) who would debate the origin of primitive society and the matriarchal lineage. And in the 20th century, the controversy would continue and acquire new dimensions with the entry of new disciplines. Psychoanalysts, linguists, anthropologists, archaeologists and feminist archaeologists: Freud, Margaret Mead, Malinowski, Lévi-Strauss, Simone de Beauvoir, Gerda Lerner, would analyze and dissect the characteristics and meaning of those primitive tribes, which still exist in remote places and that carry in their habits the functioning of that primitive world. The scientific development, the expansion to other continents and archaeological discoveries will confirm Bachofen’s idea that in prehistory women organized and directed society.
The mistake of understanding matriarchy as a replica of patriarchy, by attributing to it the characteristics of patriarchy, only this time led by women, led to replacing it and naming it as a maternal or family clan, which faithfully reflects the communal singularity of this structure that organized, under female authority, a just and egalitarian society with the other sex.
Having accepted the maternal clan as the engine of primitive society, the great debate will arise, still not concluded, which consists in elucidating how the domination of man over woman began and unfolded. In short: if there was female power before male patriarchal domination, why, how and in what way did the women lose it?
As I said above, Darwin’s figure encouraged me to write this popular essay, but it was also his simple way of presenting the facts, his fondness for detail, synthesis, and concreteness, that convinced me to structure the book in three parts, with the aim of achieving an agile and engaging narrative. Now, all that remains is to close the circle, dive into what I hope will be an interesting and pleasurable reading.
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Author: Mara Malibrán. Title: When Women Ruled. Publisher: RBA. Purchase: All of her books.