Q1: How does matriarchy work?
What are its social structures, values, and household dynamics across cultures?
Things to study:
- Matrilineal inheritance structures (e.g., Minangkabau)
- Consensus-based governance (e.g., Iroquois Confederacy)
- Household authority dynamics (e.g., elder women as stewards but not rulers)
- Economic design (e.g., gift economies, subsistence co-stewardship)
Q2: What is the role of the woman in the household within patriarchy?
How is domestic power constructed, permitted, or contained under patriarchy
- The “patriarchal bargain” (Deniz Kandiyoti)
- Victorian domesticity (e.g., Angel in the House, Gilded Age)
- Indian grihini models—how women have status within the home but not beyond it
- The homemaker as “compensated” through symbolic power (moral authority, ritual role, control over aesthetics, etc.)
Note to self: This stuff may end up in the power or civic prep module but placing it here to study it. It will feed an essay in WIMTS on control + be kind of a fun essay or module in itself.