3 ms·

Could you give some examples of contemporary matriarchal societies? Unless you're using a non-standard definition of "matriarchal", I believe you are either mis

• mahmud 17y ago
  You are right, my definition is non-standard and has an economic implication. In societies with large and extended families in one household, the women are often responsible for feeding everyone, even if the men are tasked with the generation of income. To use an extreme example of a patriarchal society, in the arab world, even if women are largely out of the workforce, they're still responsible for the household budget and they often generate secondary income on the side. It's very common for them to save money, shaving pennies from the grocery shopping and saving it for a rainy day. Hardly the binge-shopping desperate housewives alluded to in that article. Also missing from the article is what women are buying. If you're left to feed a whole family, your purchasing habits are hardly the same as someone who has to worry about his cigarettes and a few other personal necessities ;-) Read up on the work of Muhammad Yunus of Grameen Bank to understand this better.