The Mosuo are Matrilineal, not Matriarchal
I previously posted an article from The Guardian stating that the Mosuo are a matriarchal society. Based on my own readings of kinship, the Mosuo are in fact (more probably) matrilineal rather than matriarchal. What does this mean?
A matriarchal society would be (by my own definition but I'm sure it corroborates with many studies on kinship and gender) is a society where women have both formal and de facto authority and power. In Mosuo society, men still make political decisions even though women have a great deal of sexual freedom through the notion of 'walking marriage', households are centred around the mother, there is great respect for the mother and the mother holds a great deal of authority and they trace their descent through their female members. According to Linda Stone, author of Kinship and Gender, a purely matriarchal society has never been known to exist. As for myself, I have yet to come across such a society in the ethnography of both the present and the past. Arguably, a purely patriarchal society has never existed, since many societies that were considered patriarchal had women wielding some form of power. Note that I did not include in my definition of the purely matriarchal a society where men have no power. From my own reading of ethnography, it is difficult to fully control an entire gendered population. It simply doesn't occur in reality. I would argue by my own definition therefore that many a patriarchal society has existed if we consider the definition of patriarchy to be where men have formal and de facto authority and power over crucial decisions. This is irrelevant to whether women wielded any sort of power themselves. We then, have yet to find a purely matriarchal society.
I should also add that the Mosuo do not strictly adhere to the definition of matrilineal though it cannot be denied that they trace descent through the mother.
If you would like more information the Mosuo project provides unbiased and accurate information about the Mosuo. http://www.mosuoproject.org/matri.htm
As an end note perhaps I should point out that I did not wish to dishearten those that looked to the Mosuo a a source of inspiration on healthy gender relations. Mosuo women in fact do not face the many challenges that they might have faced where they born somewhere else. Their sexual freedom is not only interesting, but may even be described as admirable. Still, as the Mosuo project itself asserted, idealising a people gets you nowhere.
