3 ms·

I agree, gender could be a red herring here. Power structures could better explain the social behavior. However, I would like to understand the differences, if

• solidsnack9000 8y ago
  There doesn't seem to be such a thing as a matriarchal society -- where women hold the major political offices. The closest thing is a matrilocal society.
• solidsnack9000 8y ago
  The "Standard Cross Cultural Sample" is a large collection of data about ~180 societies across the world. The list of variables covered, broken down into categories, includes several related gender and division of labor: http://eclectic.ss.uci.edu/~drwhite/courses/stdsvars.html http://eclectic.ss.uci.edu/~drwhite/courses/stdsvars.html There is a website for browsing the data. Looks a little challenging to use: http://socscicompute.ss.uci.edu/ http://socscicompute.ss.uci.edu/ After describing some of the early research and theorizing about matriarchies, the Encyclpaedia Britannica states: "The consensus among modern anthropologists and sociologists is that while many cultures bestow power preferentially on one sex or the other, matriarchal societies in this original, evolutionary sense have never existed."