[PlungingHornets]

From what I've read about Cherokee society (one of the more recent matriarchal societies), women brought in more than half the food calories through farming. Of course they did the majority of domestic work. Men contributed less than half the food calories from hunting and did odd tasks like building. On the balance, women were probably doing significantly more work. I think this is just what tends to happen in a matriarchal society. Maybe it made more evolutionary sense to have the more calorie efficient sex doing the grunt work? Women have always tended to be the more family and society oriented sex. I guess my point is the man-child phenomenon is hardly a new development.

On the bright side, she had way more self-determination than a contemporary American/European woman. When she married, her husband moved into her mom's house. To divorce him, all she had to do was pack his stuff and leave it outside. Lineage was passed maternally.

[plotthickens]

Originally Posted by PlungingHornets To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.

From what I've read about Cherokee society (one of the more recent matriarchal societies), women brought in more than half the food calories through farming. Of course they did the majority of domestic work. Men contributed less than half the food calories from hunting and did odd tasks like building. On the balance, women were probably doing significantly more work. I think this is just what tends to happen in a matriarchal society. Maybe it made more evolutionary sense to have the more calorie efficient sex doing the grunt work? Women have always tended to be the more family and society oriented sex. I guess my point is the man-child phenomenon is hardly a new development.

Bad way to make a point. 80% of the calories in ALL hunter-gatherer societies were brought in by women foraging. Men hunted for protein, making up 20% of calories. Both were necessary, and men protected children and women from (insert native large predator here). Judging which gender provided more to the household is apples-and-oranges.

[PlungingHornets]

	Originally Posted by plotthickens To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
	Bad way to make a point. 80% of the calories in ALL hunter-gatherer societies were brought in by women foraging. Men hunted for protein, making up 20% of calories. Both were necessary, and men protected children and women from (insert native large predator here). Judging which gender provided more to the household is apples-and-oranges.

The Cherokee were not hunter-gatherers. Hunter-gatherer societies are generally egalitarian. I'm not saying men were worthless. I'm saying women had economic and therefor social power.

[plotthickens]

	Originally Posted by PlungingHornets To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
	The Cherokee were not hunter-gatherers.

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[HIDE="How were the Cherokee not hunter-gatherers?"]

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Yellow = hunter-gathering areas
Green = simple farming societies
Orange = complex farming societies/chiefdoms

[/HIDE]

	Originally Posted by PlungingHornets To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
	Hunter-gatherer societies are generally egalitarian. I'm not saying men were worthless. I'm saying women had economic and therefor social power.

Massive, massive citations needed.

[PlungingHornets]

	Originally Posted by plotthickens To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
	How were the Cherokee not hunter-gatherers?

I don't know why this is controversial. Many Indian tribes on the east coast consumed corn, etc. as the bulk of their diet.

"The Cherokee were horticulturalists, raising cereal and vegetable crops on a swidden basis and supplementing their subsistence through hunting, fishing, and collecting. The primary cultigen was maize and the most important game animal the white-tailed deer. Contact with Europeans resulted in the addition of new grains, vegetables, and domesticated animals. During the seventeenth century the European fur trade became a central factor in the Cherokee economy. But the trade declined in the mid-eighteenth century, and the Cherokee adopted more intensive forms of agriculture and animal husbandry."

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They even appealed the Indian Removal Act to the Supreme Court.

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While we're at it, can you source your statement about women needing men to protect them from large animals? I think the closest you can come to successfully arguing that is they needed protection from men.

	Originally Posted by plotthickens To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
	Massive, massive citations needed.

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[plotthickens]

	Originally Posted by PlungingHornets To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
	I don't know why this is controversial. Many Indian tribes on the east coast consumed corn, etc. as the bulk of their diet. "The Cherokee were horticulturalists, raising cereal and vegetable crops on a swidden basis and supplementing their subsistence through hunting, fishing, and collecting.

The Cherokee did not pop into existence in 1490 as swidden agriculturists. A large amount of their caloric intake was from hunting and gathering right up until contact.

Swidden is otherwise known as "slash-and-burn". Why were they slash-and-burning instead of rotating crops? Because the importation of Eisenia hortensis, Eisenia fetida, Lumbricus terrestris etc (1) had yet to happen. Without these european-native earthworms, permanent field cultivation is impossible (2). The Cherokee (and all maize-eating First Nation peoples with the exception of Mesoamerican and Andean cultures (5), who found alternate and fascinating ways of supporting the outrageous nutritional needs Maize, tobacco, four sisters, etc demand of soil (6) ) would slash a bit of vegetation down, burn it, then plant in the ash-covered field. Then they'd leave for a few decades; the tribe would return much later and replant.

This method of "shifting cultivation agriculture" (3) typically took two years. During these two years other things had to be found to eat. Since the people were on the move and without horses, they could not bring a year's worth of maize on travois... they were, therefore at least partly hunter-gatherers.

So Swidden agriculture, while technically 'sticking a seed in the ground and eating what comes up', is not what we consider 'farming' today. Most historians (including Cherokee historians) conclude that Cherokee and proto-Cherokee tribes were hunter-gatherers and, as time went on, the method of food support gradually turned to Swidden agriculture, supplemented greatly by hunter-gatherer activities. Post-contact, the switch from Swidden to rotation ag was pretty sudden (8).

Please note that I personally harbor great suspicion that the 'hunter-gatherer' activities noted by historians were instead harvesting of heritage permaculture forests, but evidence for same only resides in mesoamerican and andean notes and therefore not relevant here. Anyway. Let's do some quotes!

	At the time of white contact the Cherokee people were self-reliant hunter-gatherer-farmers who lived in towns and had a democratic form of constitutional government.

(4)

Another of Attakullakulla’s sons participated in the 1791 annihilation of the American Army in the Ohio River Valley, but in 1794, all Cherokee factions signed another treaty with the U.S. In 1792, the United States allocated funding to begin trying to turn the Native Americans into European peasants, and the Cherokee were the logical tribe to begin the experiment on. The U.S. began providing plows, spinning wheels and other European technology. It was not exactly an altruistic move. Sedentary farmers and craftsmen needed far less land than hunter-gatherers, and the Cherokee adopted the white man’s ways in order to survive. That transformation caused upheaval within the Cherokee people, as many of the white man’s ways were disgusting to native sensibility. Nevertheless, the Cherokee adopted European methods to such an extent that the name “civilized” was applied to their tribe, and others who adopted similar practices. [/FONT]

(5)

Partially in response to these dangers, Cherokee farmers had in the ancient past learned to draw their harvest from beyond the boundaries of what could be reconstructed as recognizably cultivated fields. Thus first generation agriculture remained as central as corn to the colonial-era Cherokee diet. Gathered foods -- nuts, fruits, and grasses -- made a critical contribution to the Cherokee diet and were almost entirely collected by women. These foods perhaps made up as much as half of the nonmeat portion of the early Cherokee diet in the Precontact period.

(7)


(1)
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(2)The Works of Charles Darwin, Volume 28: The Formation of Vegetable Mould Through the Action of Worms With Observations on Their Habits
(3)
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(4)
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(5)
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(6)
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(7) Powhatan's Mantle: Indians in the Colonial Southeast, p. 309
(8) The Cambridge history of the Native Peoples of the Americas, Part 1



By the way, that's how you do citations. A wikipedia link to a basic article, while seemingly supercilious and conclusive in debate, is rather shallow in substance.

Originally Posted by PlungingHornets To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.

Hunter-gatherer societies are generally egalitarian. I'm not saying men were worthless. I'm saying women had economic and therefor social power.   Originally Posted by plotthickens To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts. Massive, massive citations needed.   Originally Posted by PlungingHornets; To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.

Try again.

	Originally Posted by PlungingHornets To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
	While we're at it, can you source your statement about women needing men to protect them from large animals? I think the closest you can come to successfully arguing that is they needed protection from men.

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Yes, of course, lions, tigers and bears were cuddly and wanted to have tea with Hominids. The REAL problem is those evil menfolk. Evil, evil penises.

How bout you back up your shit (above) and then I'll back up mine? I kinda already went first (see comment on supercilious wikipedia citations).

[PlungingHornets]

	Originally Posted by plotthickens To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
	The Cherokee did not pop into existence in 1490 as swidden agriculturists.

Swidden =/= hunter gatherer. I don't know why you went to all that work to pull up all that crap. Even in that form of agriculture, women were doing more of the work and getting more of the calories. So my point is still valid.

	Originally Posted by plotthickens To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
	By the way, that's how you do citations. A wikipedia link to a basic article, while seemingly supercilious and conclusive in debate, is rather shallow in substance.

Yeah, I totally hacked Wikipedia! Look what I can do in 5 minutes with google.

"In the typical hunter-gatherer society, decision-making is collective, yet decentralized, access to resources is shared, goods are typically distributed via reciprocal exchange, sharing, and gift-giving, and the distribution of both income and decision-making power is egalitarian."

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"A three-year study of hunting practices among the Agta Negrito people of northern Luzon reveals women's active participation in hunting, singly and in groups, without detriment to normal fertility and child care."

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"But early human societies, such as the quintessential hunter-gatherer society, is generalized as being egalitarian. Prior to the agricultural revolution, hunting and gathering is thought to have been the only subsistence strategy deployed by early human cultures. Studying modern day hunter gatherers, ethnographers have noted that such societies distribute dominance much more equally and thus tend to be non hierarchical."

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"Hunter-gatherer peoples, according to the researchers, have quite equitable wealth distribution."

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"This paper describes relations between the sexes for two
groups of !Kung: those living a traditional hunting and
gathering life at /Du/da and those who have recently adopted a
settled way of life in the !Kangwa Valley and who are now
living by agriculture, animal husbandry, and a small amount of
gathering.
The point to be developed at some length is that in the
hunting and gathering context, women have a great deal of
autonomy and influence. Some of the contexts in which this
egalitarianism is expressed will be described in detail, and
certain features of the foraging life which promote egalitarianism
will be isolated. They are: women's subsistence
contribution and the control women retain over the food they
have gathered; the requisites of foraging in the Kalahari which
entail a similar degree of mobility for both sexes; the lack of
rigidity in sex-typing of many adult activities, including
domestic chores and aspects of child socialization; the cultural
sanction against physical expression of aggression; the small
group size; and the nature of the settlement pattern.
Features of sedentary life that appear to be related to a
decrease in women's autonomy and influence are: increasing
rigidity in sex-typing of adult work; more permanent attachment
of the individual to a particular place and group of people;
dissimilar childhood socialization for boys and girls; decrease
in the mobility of women as contrasted with men; changing
nature of women's subsistence contribution; richer material
inventory with implications for women's work; tendency for
men to have greater access to and control over such important
resources as domestic animals, knowledge of Bantu language
and culture, wage work; male entrance into extravillage
politics; settlement pattern; and increasing household privacy."

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"There are no wedding ceremonies. A couple that sleeps at the same fire for a while may eventually refer to themselves as married. Most of the Hadza I met, men and women alike, were serial monogamists, changing spouses every few years.

Gender roles are distinct, but for women there is none of the forced subservience knit into many other cultures. A significant number of Hadza women who marry out of the group soon return, unwilling to accept bullying treatment. Among the Hadza, women are frequently the ones who initiate a breakup—woe to the man who proves himself an incompetent hunter or treats his wife poorly. In Onwas's camp, some of the loudest, brashest members were women."

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	Originally Posted by plotthickens To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
	Yes, of course, lions, tigers and bears were cuddly and wanted to have tea with Hominids. The REAL problem is those evil menfolk. Evil, evil penises.

No. You need to cite this. You are saying women need men to protect them from being torn apart by wild animals. This goes against my argument that there have been cultures in the past where women were were not dependent on brute male strength on a daily basis. Don't deflect this with sarcasm. P.S. I am talking about people, not hominids.

	Originally Posted by plotthickens To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
	How bout you back up your shit (above) and then I'll back up mine?

Except, you didn't, even when I directly asked you to.

[plotthickens]

	Originally Posted by PlungingHornets To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
	Swidden =/= hunter gatherer.

Let's compromise and say it's the midpoint between hunter-gatherer and a society dependant on field agriculture. Let's also say that your cherry-picking the endpoint of Cherokee civilization as a benchmark for saying that "the Cherokee were agricultural" is, at best, disingenuous.

	Originally Posted by PlungingHornets To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
	Even in that form of agriculture, women were doing more of the work and getting more of the calories. So my point is still valid.

Citations needed.

Originally Posted by PlungingHornets To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.

Yeah, I totally hacked Wikipedia! Look what I can do in 5 minutes with google. (quote: decisions, goods and resources are all shared in h-g societies) (quote: woman hunt in this society) (quote: h-g societies have egalitarian wealth distribution) (quote: h-g societies are non-hierarchical) (quote: h-g societies have egalitarian wealth distribution) (quote: women are autonomous/egalitarian/mobile/lack rigid gender roles in this h-g society & retain control over their food) (quote: people in this culture do not get married/are not together for long periods of time) (quote: women in this culture are loud, brash)

What, exactly, are these quotes supposed to prove, again? They seem to not be pertinent at all to what you previously stated was your theory.

	Originally Posted by PlungingHornets To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
	No. You need to cite this. You are saying women need men to protect them from being torn apart by wild animals.

What I said was "men protected children and women from (insert native large predator here)." Your counter was nonsensical. What you wrote above was a slightly better rephrasing, but apparently you didn't hear what I said inbetween your riposts. I have already provided excellent sources for one of my counters (swidden ag is not 'real' ag). You have yet to provide a topic sentence and coherant support for any of your statements, to the point where I'm not sure what your statements are anymore. Please do so (third request).

[Haumea]

	On the bright side, she had way more self-determination than a contemporary American/European woman. When she married, her husband moved into her mom's house. To divorce him, all she had to do was pack his stuff and leave it outside. Lineage was passed maternally.

I think your first sentence doesn't support your third. Sounds like no-fault divorce, minus the alimony.
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[PlungingHornets]

	Originally Posted by plotthickens To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
	Let's compromise and say it's the midpoint between hunter-gatherer and a society dependant on field agriculture. Let's also say that your cherry-picking the endpoint of Cherokee civilization as a benchmark for saying that "the Cherokee were agricultural" is, at best, disingenuous.

Arrooo. That was just an example of one matriarchal society. My point wasn't to argue about what kind of agriculture the Cherokee practiced. (And its hardly my fault the Cherokee were forcibly removed from their lands so we can't see what would have ultimately happened with their matriarchal society). My point was that when women control calories they control societal power and they are self determining agents and have less reliance on men. This is true for hunter gatherer societies, its true for slash and burn, its true for the relatively modern agriculture for Matriarchichal Cherokee and now its true for us now that women are able to successfully compete with men in the work place.

	Originally Posted by plotthickens To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
	Citations needed.

It would seem that men did the hard labor of clearing the area, then women would do the actual planting, harvesting, etc over the next however many years the land was usable. (I'm pretty sure this is covered in 4th grade American history.)

"The Iroquois were an agricultural people and it was the women who owned the
land and tended the crops.” (Iroquois Democracy) Women have always planted,
cultivated, harvested, and processed the crops; it was a privilege because women have a
connection to the earth."

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	Originally Posted by plotthickens To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
	What, exactly, are these quotes supposed to prove, again? They seem to not be pertinent at all to what you previously stated was your theory.

You asked me to show that hunter gatherer societies are egalitarian. And yes it is pertinent. Women do meaningful work, they have power and are self determining agents and are less dependent on men. There we go.

	Originally Posted by plotthickens To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
	Your counter was nonsensical.

My counter was to ask you to furnish your data, which you have failed to do, and I believe you will continue to do because I don't think its true that women need men to keep them safe from wild animals. I wasn't trying to make an anti-man statement there. I was trying to ask you to support your notion that women need men to keep them safe from wild animals.

	Originally Posted by plotthickens To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
	I have already provided excellent sources for one of my counters (swidden ag is not 'real' ag).

This would be great, if the main argument we were having was about what kind of agriculture matriarchal Cherokee Indians conducted.

	Originally Posted by plotthickens To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
	You have yet to provide a topic sentence and coherant support for any of your statements, to the point where I'm not sure what your statements are anymore. Please do so (third request).

That's funny, because I'm pretty sure I'm repeating myself.

Here's my topic statement: When women are in control of their of their meaningful productive labor they are afforded more self determination and have less need for men.

---------- Post added 10-19-2011 at 08:51 PM ----------

	Originally Posted by Haumea To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
	I think your first sentence doesn't support your third. Sounds like no-fault divorce, minus the alimony. To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.

Depending on someone to be competent to support you, while being asked to not work yourself, is the opposite of self-determination.

[eagleseven]

This thread showcases the folly of applying modern standards and sensibilities to past cultures. The Cherokee population was constantly under threat of attack by rival tribes, European colonists, and nature itself. A society that can survive using just the labor of females can muster a larger army than one which kept its men off the front lines...analogous to women working while men fought World War II.

Your "Matriarchal Society" would be destroyed if not for the "useless" man-boys. You failed to see this because you assume, consciously or not, that Cherokee society had military and police like America has today.

As we are now learning in Afghanistan and throughout Africa, tribal societies are very violent, with a near-constant state of war with one rival or another. Native American tribes were no different (look at the brutality of meso-america), which is also why they could give superiorly-armed Europeans such a hard time.

War was so common in Cherokee society that they had a separate government, led by the Red Warchief, to plan and coordinate their decades-long wars.

[Cooper]

I am curious....which history are you relying on, the whiteman's or the native's?

[Claudus]

Were there female chiefs?

[Einarr]

ok here are my two cents worth.

I am using this definition of egalitarian.
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	affirming, promoting or characterized by believe in

does not state, but implies that egalitarianism is a conscious effort of society.

In primitive societies, men and women are codependent for survival. Neither survive for long duration without the other. The equality in which the OP is referring to I think, is an EVOLVED social condition to further the possibility of survival and was likely not a conscious effort.

In contrast, recent past modern inequalities as far as European history is concerned is a product of Christianity and the believe that woman is born of a man's rib, and therefore his property.

---------- Post added 10-20-2011 at 01:22 AM ----------

	Originally Posted by Claudus To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
	Were there female chiefs?

First Female Cherokee Chief Dies..................
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And due note the woman's name, ironic isnt it?

[pironiro]

	Originally Posted by eagleseven To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
	As we are now learning in Afghanistan and throughout Africa, tribal societies are very violent, with a near-constant state of war with one rival or another. Native American tribes were no different (look at the brutality of meso-america), which is also why they could give superiorly-armed Europeans such a hard time.

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But... but I was told they lived in peace and harmony until the white devils came and ruined everything? Like the Avatar movie? No?

[Haumea]

	Depending on someone to be competent to support you, while being asked to not work yourself, is the opposite of self-determination.

Well, firstly alimony doesn't always mean a non-working wife -- sometimes it means a wife who makes enough to support herself but a husband who really rakes it in and provides a lavish lifestyle. So that's just a subset of cases. Given a) hypergamy and b) prevalence of educated women today I do not quite see the picture you paint as representative.

[thod]

	Swidden is otherwise known as "slash-and-burn".

How do you slash and burn without metal tools? Temperate forests tend to be damp, the material rots before it can accumulate and thus fires do not burn hot enough to destroy everything. Without draft animals they could not plough and tree roots would break anything made of wood. Thus they were not true farmers. They would be more like today's rain forest Indians. Clear a small patch, plant something, return later to harvest it.

[Einarr]

Originally Posted by thod To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.

How do you slash and burn without metal tools? Temperate forests tend to be damp, the material rots before it can accumulate and thus fires do not burn hot enough to destroy everything. Without draft animals they could not plough and tree roots would break anything made of wood. Thus they were not true farmers. They would be more like today's rain forest Indians. Clear a small patch, plant something, return later to harvest it.

Metal tools are not needed. Stone tools, specifically chert, will cut down a tree nearly as fast as a bronze ax. Chert axes have been in use in the US since at least 1000 BC.....The Early Woodland Period, Adena Culture

European cutures, who had plough horses and oxen, used what is called an ard prior to the invention of the steel billed plow.
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While I agree that a lack of suitable plough animals is a hinderence, it is not a preventer.....even in the US's dark taunted history........slave humans have been used to pull said ploughs. and even at times voluntary humans also

And as far as permanent agriculture......Late Mississippian Culture 800 to 1600 AD........Mill Creek Hoe, titled so because they were mass produced from the same rock strata, have been found all over the central US. While this does not say that the Cherokee had them. It does say they were wide spread in their use, for a duration in time. and a possibility.

[plotthickens]

	Originally Posted by Cooper To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
	I am curious....which history are you relying on, the whiteman's or the native's?

We only have what we can find on the Net. It's your culture, Big C. Do you have more info for us?

[Purgatid]

I'm curious as to what the OP wants to accomplish with this thread.

[catzmeow]

I don't find the idea of a matriarchal society any more appealing than a patriarchal one. Is it so hard for people to embrace the idea of egalitarianism?

[Storm]

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of a modern matriarchy. I don't know if I'd classify this society as egalitarian. It doesn't appear the men are oppressed, but they don't have any role in making societal decisions. I'd say that any society which can be classified as either a patriarchy or a matriarchy is, by definition, not egalitarian. In both, one sex holds the power to make the important decisions, whereas the other sex does not. Obviously, there are examples of both where the sex out of power has more or less rights, but that doesn't make them equal.

[PlungingHornets]

Originally Posted by eagleseven To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.

This thread showcases the folly of applying modern standards and sensibilities to past cultures. The Cherokee population was constantly under threat of attack by rival tribes, European colonists, and nature itself. A society that can survive using just the labor of females can muster a larger army than one which kept its men off the front lines...analogous to women working while men fought World War II. Your "Matriarchal Society" would be destroyed if not for the "useless" man-boys. You failed to see this because you assume, consciously or not, that Cherokee society had military and police like America has today.

I never said that men are useless. Infact I alluded to the war issue when I made the point that men may be necessary to protect women from other men. None of this changes the point I made about a woman being relatively independent from any particular man (I guess I wasn't explicit about the "particular" part). She may need men in general to prevent her village from being over-run by a neighboring tribe, but when she gets tired of her husband's shit she is economically free to divorce his ass. If women are performing most of the vital economic activity and men are performing most of the vital protection activity, then you will tend to get a more egalitarian society. Compare this to the Christian style of marriage where women are neither doing the bulk of economic activity, nor protection activity. In this arrangement they tend to become chattel rather than peers.

The man-child comment comes from the fact that women did more labor, in total, than men. And no I don't want to source that. I've furnished sources for everything already, I'm not making it up, I promise.
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	Originally Posted by Haumea To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
	Well, firstly alimony doesn't always mean a non-working wife -- sometimes it means a wife who makes enough to support herself but a husband who really rakes it in and provides a lavish lifestyle. So that's just a subset of cases. Given a) hypergamy and b) prevalence of educated women today I do not quite see the picture you paint as representative.

I personally think it sucks that one spouse in some places is automatically entitled to 50% of their spouse's assets. Unless they both jointly ran a business together or something, I don't see how this is fair (this cuts both ways, but usually its the man who gets screwed). Alimony originally was for the stereotypical housewife who's education ended in at high school and had been out of the workforce for 20 years. It was the only thing keeping her from being destitute. In a dual income situation (assuming both spouses have reasonable quality jobs), I don't see how its fair.

Originally Posted by Storm To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.

To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts. of a modern matriarchy. I don't know if I'd classify this society as egalitarian. It doesn't appear the men are oppressed, but they don't have any role in making societal decisions. I'd say that any society which can be classified as either a patriarchy or a matriarchy if, by definition, not egalitarian. In both, one sex holds the power to make the important decisions, whereas the other sex does not. Obviously, there are examples of both where the sex out of power has more or less rights, but that doesn't make them equal.

I did not title this thread. Whoever split it from the other thread did. But I agree with your point.

[Huruma]

By definition, a 'matriarchal' society cannot be egalitarian.

[plotthickens]

	Originally Posted by PlungingHornets To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
	I did not title this thread. Whoever split it from the other thread did. But I agree with your point.

Thread title changed to "Women controlling their labor = more self determination & less need for men", necessarily condensed from

	Originally Posted by PlungingHornets To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
	Here's my topic statement: When women are in control of their of their meaningful productive labor they are afforded more self determination and have less need for men.