Social system in which familial and political authority is wielded by women.
Under the influence of
d. 1887, Basel), some 19th-century scholars believed that matriarchy followed a stage of general promiscuity and preceded male ascendancy (patriarchy) in human society's evolutionary sequence. Like other elements of the evolutionist view of culture, the notion of matriarchy as a universal stage of development is now generally discredited, and the modern consensus is that a strictly matriarchal society has never existed. Nevertheless, in those societies in which matrilineal {{link=descent">descent occurs, access to socially powerful positions is mediated through the maternal line of kin. See also sociocultural evolution .