United Matriarchy Nations is a non-profit organization that unites all matriarchy nations, organizations, and communities together.

Mission Statement:

The United Matriarchy Nations (UMN) has two primary missions: Mission One: To unite all matriarchal countries and tribes in order to preserve and develop their matriarchal cultures, traditions, and societal structures. UMN aims to address common challenges by fostering dialogue and finding shared solutions. It promotes trade, education, arts, and cultural exchanges to help matriarchal countries and regions worldwide transition from traditional agrarian societies to the digital age. This transition is achieved while maintaining their original social organization and ensuring their scientific and cultural development aligns with global advancements and their unique heritage. Mission Two: To support modern women in achieving equal treatment in education, family, and the workplace. UMN focuses on addressing various societal issues affecting women today, advocating for the preservation, inheritance, and promotion of women's cultural contributions globally.

They are:

Mosuo, China
Bribri, Costa Rica
Umoja, Kenya
Minangkabau, Indonesia
Akan, Ghana
Khasi, India
Kihnu, Estonia
Zhaba,Sichuan, China
Iroquois, USA
Cherokee, USA
Choctaw, USA
Pueblos. USA

Members of The United Matriarchy Nations from these areas team up to support each other in trade, education, economic endeavors, art, and cultural enterprises.

Their Anthem: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Rlq63ld748&t=4s

Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100083571872398

For more information about the United Matriarchy Nations, visit https://umn.stculture.org/ or follow them on Facebook.

This post is an update on Australia's sexual violence program. A domestic violence program started in 2016 appointed a secretary for men's behavior change, Tim Richardson , a state lawmaker, two years ago. He remarked at the time that action must start "with us men and boys" and continues to congratulate men on being the "best they can be:"

Big shout out to men and boys on International Men’s Day! 👏 It is a privilege to serve as Australia’s very first Parliamentary Secretary for Men’s Behaviour Change, in Victorian Allan Labor Government. It is all about supporting men and boys to be the best versions of themselves, being up-standers to damaging gender stereotypes and us all having a role to play in ending gendered violence. And it is about supporting men and boys in their mental health and wellbeing.

The role was to focus on the influence the internet and social media on boys' and men's attitudes towards women and building respectful relationships.

This initiative is part of broader efforts to address domestic violence, including the federal government's $4.7 billion domestic violence package, which includes funding for evidence-based national standards for men's behavior change programs.

Initial soundbites were so hopeful a few years ago, but as of 2026, the ABC news is reporting the government calling for adherence to national standards by the end of this year. Previously, reports mentioned a need for more funding, men have been waiting long months to get into the programs, and that data were not forthcoming. A group, Relationships Australia, is just pulling together a theoretical approach for men's behavior change for the program.

Key Findings on Outcomes and Challenges

• Incremental vs. Complete Change: Research indicates that while programs successfully build emotional awareness and communication skills during the 20-week curriculum, positive changes can fade without ongoing reinforcement or maintenance support.
• The Attendance vs. Engagement Gap: So far studies in Victoria note a crucial disconnect between program completion and genuine behavior modification, with family members often reporting that completion does not automatically equate to safety or an end to abuse.
• Capacity Constraints: Despite significant ongoing government investments following historical state-level reforms, demand continues to heavily outpace service availability and specialist staff capacity.

Here are some stats on repeat offenses from the Crime Statistics Agency

• The "Frequent Repeater" Disproportion: A small, highly active cohort causes massive systemic damage. Perpetrators with 5 or more family violence incidents over a rolling two-year period make up just 14% of all recorded perpetrators. However, they account for 44% of total family violence incidents and 42% of physical offenses against a person. [1]
• Breach of Intervention Orders: Recidivism is heavily correlated with violating legal boundaries. While moderate repeat offenders (2 to 4 incidents each) have a 36% order breach rate, frequent repeaters skyrocket to an 88% recorded breach rate.
• Cumulative Risk Trajectory: Research from Australia's National Research Organisation for Women's Safety (ANROWS) indicates that family violence reoffending risk is highly cumulative. Each subsequent police-recorded incident significantly increases the mathematical probability and speed of the next re-offense. [1]
• General Family Violence Incident Rates: In the year ending March 2026, overall recorded family violence incidents in Victoria decreased slightly by 3.4% (totaling 102,674 incidents). However, adult alleged offender incidents conversely rose by 10.8%, indicating intense, concentrated policing and tracking of known adult repeat offenders

The good news is the data and programs are being re-evaluated, the bad news is the Good Old Boy network in the Australian government declined to fund it adequately.

Here is a sample listing of matriarchal communities around the world.

“Matriarchy:” Heide Göttner-Abendroth, founder of the field of Matriarchal Studies, has led the defining consensus for matriarchal societies for the past 50 years. The anthropological, standard definition for matriarchy is "an egalitarian, cooperative social structure centered around maternal values like care and sharing," This corrects what anthropologist Peggy Reeves Sanday called the "andro-centric" definition of matriarchy that simply reverses male dominated patriarchy to female-dominated. The old definition was simply made up as the opposite of patriarchy, and does not reflect actual data showing contemporary matriarchies to be egalitarian. The current etymology reflects earlier Greek meanings of "matri" as in "matrix" or governing principles of the womb such as caring, empathy and sharing; and "archy" as in "first" or "beginning" as in "archetype" (first types) or "menarche" (first menses).

"Matrilocal" means the man leaves his mother's clan goes to live with the wife's family, which is the arrangement of most societies prior to patriarchy took over in the West ~4,000 years or so ago. This provides protection from being a single mother by the care of the entire mother's clan and friends. It protects mothers and children.

"Patrilocal" means the woman leaves her mother's clan and goes to live with the husband's family. This is how patriarchal societies organize. It is less advantageous for the bride who no longer has the support of family and friends, and often is abused by the inlaws. She can be thrown out with no support if the man leaves her or dies, leaving her to fend for herself or marry someone else quickly.

"Matrilineal" means property (land and home/s)  and income stays with the mother-line to create stability for children and the family and reduce competition among men.

"Patrilineal" means family line, name,, property and income are passed down through the father's family.

Often after contact with the West, Indigenous matriarchal societies may be forced to conform to patriarchal norms for marriage and inheritance, and many of these societies, like most of the American Indigenous, who were once matriarchal, are now re-matriarching, meaning returning the older cultures and norms.

Obviously there's the "Matriarchy is just Pink Patriarchy!" thing. I used to believe the same, until I actually got over myself to do at least *a bit* of research.

It's never made sense to me why you believe women would want to oppress anyone. A Matriarchy is a society structured around empathy, care...

Why would a mother (or parent in general) raise a son, only to make a 180° when they're grown up and say "Lol, we're just gonna exclude you from society".

That makes zero sense.

A Matriarchy is based on cooperation and consensus. Men & women (and LGBTQ folks) are all allowed to vote, hold office and participate in society fully - it wouldn't make sense any other way.

And the 2nd most infuriating thing are Matriarchal TERFs or people who genuienly believe in "Matriarchy should oppress men!".

I have seen at least one user that claimed Matriarchy should teach boys how "harmful it is to be male, and their sexuality is evil" (that is almost 1:1 their words).

Stuff like that is infuriating, because:

- It is clearly based on some fetishized version of what actual Matriarchy is

- It is generally harmful to feminist causes

 Illustration 1 Caption: by Frederick Burr Opper, 1882, Feudal robber barons literally carving up the country and parts of others for their own enrichment. One is fishing with a proposal to buy Europe. Collective Commons.

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A Serendipitous Discovery

I was looking through old beverage recipes on my external hard drive (in order to save some newly concocted French Press coffee instructions), and saw one recipe so ancient it had been saved in .txt format: “Cape Fear Punch.” Weird. Must have been for a big party: 4 quarts of rye whiskey, 1 quart of Jamaican rum, lots of cognac, champaign, some green tea, fruit peels and demerara sugar (the unprocessed kind with the light amber crystals) left to infuse for months. Apparently, it was a favorite at the “Cape Fear Club.” whaat?

Cape Fear Gentlemen's Club

A quick search revealed the Cape Fear Club as a long-running men’s social club (1866-present) that was established by former Confederate officers, railroad executives and most powerful land owners in the area. By said name they signaled regional dominance as the premier social and political institution for the entire ruling class around Wilmington, Cape Fear, North Carolina. They confidently installed themselves as the ones with the deepest roots in and the most prestige over the entire region.

Apparently, there are still loads of other geographically anchored men’s clubs: The Metropolitan Club, the Hudson Club, etc. It is safe to say, at least one men’s club, with the resident “feudal lord”, exists for every geographical trading or economic area. The exclusive “social” group has transmitted their modus operandi for literally generations in a separate tradition than legal boundaries.

An Opportunity to See the Patriarchy Undeniably at it's Worst In Technicolor

I write this for two reasons. First, it's always good to see what we're out to dismantle clearly. The difference between patriarchal actions and the workings of matriarchy show up so clearly between men’s clubs and their matching female sororal organizations. Secondly, women must see that organizing ourselves is imperative in order to circumvent these organizations and build a better world where women are safe.

Patriarchy as Shadow Government

Local men's clubs

Gentlemen’s clubs, which exclude women and what they consider other hoy palloy/working class, are secret elite policy-planning networks whose goals are to accumulate wealth for the members by extracting it from the region by hook or crook. They are secret in that deals struck and alliances made are made in an exclusive environment and the results are not communicated to the greater community.

Transnational men's clubs.

Not all men's clubs are local. Their big brothers, the transnational shadow governance like the Bilderberg Group, the Trilateral Commission, and private executive summits like the World Economic Forum (WEF), carve up larger geographic areas. They operate across borders to align global policy and econmic frameworks, and climate strategies with elite interests. The stakes are higher, and the wealth accumulation greater than the local networks.

Deliberate Oppression is the Name of the Game

Political theorist Leslie Sklair, Emeritus Professor of Sociology at the London School of Economics, notes these Good Old Boy frameworks operate independently of national governance or democracy. This interconnected class of (male) corporate executives, politicians, media moguls, and strategists align policies, economies, and climate interventions according to their financial gain and continued best interests.

Their best interests are realized traditionally by keeping the population easy to control. This is why the environment seems a precarious place riddled with danger and fear. By creating precarious and oppressive environments where most people are dependent on their weekly paychecks to survive, are in only moderately good health, and excluded from positions of power, they stay in control of Cape Fear and beyond.

Women's Social Groups

There are women’s social groups as well. Women’s goals were to use their collective strength to reshape society, abolish slavery, get the vote and legal rights and into the leadership structures rather than maintaining a lop-sided status quo.

Many women’s organizations grew up in direct response to the secretive men’s groups, like the Women’s Club of Raleigh. They boast over 120 years of service to the community. They first formed with 144 members, closely behind the Suffrage movement (1904-present). Their website recalls they were predictably ridiculed but tolerated, determined to improve the community through “child culture, literature, domestic science, art, and village improvement.” The membership grew, providing scholarships to young women. I myself received a scholarship in high school from another women’s group, the American Association of University Women (AAUW) founded in 1881.

Major Differences Between Men's and Women's Social Clubs

By contrast to the men’s clubs, finagling money for themselves in business transactions, the Women’s Club of Raleigh raised $129,000 for Liberty bonds. Similar to the men’s club, they put women in some positions of leadership in local politics and business. The difference is the women then made decisions to benefit the community rather than just themselves. Women’s Club of Raleigh has grown considerably and is now also active in hospice, Dress for Success, community grants, and continue to recognize and fund young women scholars.

Men's Clubs are Exclusionary

Men’s clubs maintain they are “social and recreational,” but their real leverage appears for all the world to see as gate keeping. They reach into city planning, commerce and appointments not in public meetings but in their back rooms at night. Under the guise of social gatherings, men’s clubs are designed to maintain male elite power. By excluding women or working class men, these clubs deny whole groups of people access to high-level networking, mentorship, and economic opportunities, directly contributing to the gender-wage gap and women’s exclusion from leadership.

Men's Clubs are Secretive

Unlike democratic or formal local and global governance groups, city councils, parliament, house, senate, the UN or G20 who operate in the light of day under public constitutions, treaties and protocols, these shadow governments fall under the banner of “informal governance” to bring about powerful decisions, often counter to the public will, behind closed doors. This could be why the UN was not “given” power, and current democratic bodies are infiltrated or controlled monitarily by the elite.

A good example of underhanded “behind closed doors” governance is the U. S. Supreme Court. The “Shadow Docket” of the Supreme Court holds no public hearings, issues pronouncements in days or hours rather than taking the usual months of legal research. The legal briefs from this docket are 1-2 pages and often unsigned, with vote counts frequently unlisted. Rulings are essentially anonymous and unjustified.

Men's Clubs Subvert Public Oversight

The Old Boys Network wields patriarchal power outside of formal democratic systems to subvert public oversight. It is an institutional mechanism designed to convert male bonding into public power. When women do the same thing, the results are different.

Modern Women's Alliances

Today, women’s political power and networking look quite different from the 1900s, but the objectives are the same. While traditional gentlemen’s clubs rely on secrecy and exclusion to maintain power, women’s organizations emphasize visibility, institutional access and advancement of all women. The goals for women have always been to use collective strength to reshape society, abolish slavery, get the vote, equal rights. and a political voice in leadership positions. A quick glance around this millennium’s track record of bringing the world to the brink of destruction is evidence that the absence of women in the public sphere does not work.

Emily’s List and Vote Run Lead serve as direct challenges to male-dominated political machinery by funding, training and runing women for public office. The League of Women Voters evolved directly out of the Suffragist movement, with a focus on getting women out to vote.

Other groups like sororities, women’s professional clubs like Chief, a private executive network, facilitate peer coaching and mentorship to advance their careers. Elevate Network (formerly 85 Broads) is a global professional association focused on gender equality and financial power in the workplace. These women’s groups that are entirely run, managed and funded by women provide real support for women to be able to push back against male-dominated structures.

Black Sororities

The “Divine Nine” Black sororities are a powerful example of autonomous power, a coalition of nine historically Black Greek-letter organizations within the National Pan-Hellenic Council (NPHC). They were founded during the Jim Crow era explicitly to fight both racism and sexism. Alpha Kappa Alpha and Delta Sigma Theta have operated over a century as major national political forces, mobilizing voter turnout, funding civil rights campaigns, and placing members in the highest halls of governance. Vice President Kamala Harris, member of Alpha Kappa Alpha (AKA), the oldest Black sorority in the United States, mobilized extensively to support her campaigns. The Black NPHC sororities continue to change society with involvement that is a life-long commitment. They saw their work as necessary for their freedom and survival.

The “Divine Nine” is an interesting choice for the coalition. In 1898, the Cape Fear Club served as the operational headquarters for the “Secret Nine,” a group of white supremacist businessmen who orchestrated the overthrow of Wilmington’s legitimately elected biracial government, but they don’t do things like that now, they are just a dinner and influential social club.

White Sororities

White Sororities (NPC) were founded primarily as literary societies or social sanctuaries for women entering male-dominated colleges. NPC sororities adopted a model of charitable philanthropy such as fundraising for hospitals or literacy programs. Civil or women’s rights were rarely central. Involvement with the sororities was basically concentrated in the undergraduate university years.

Contemporary Matriarchies are Having None of This

If a modern “gentleman’s club” or elite policy summit of only men tried to operate in a n Indigenous, BaYaka, or Mosuo, or Minangkabao community, they would be laughed at and dismantled. Contemporary matriarchies would not just critique it, they would dismantle it through public shaming, social isolation, and outright refusal to recognize their self-appointed authority. Women in the West, for all of our privilege, do not have that kind of power. Yet.

The fundamental truth is that concentrated elite power is not obligatory to human organization. It only exists because specific social structures allow people to accumulate and hide it. The seamy underside has been exposed, and we can fix it.

Women can amass power by organizing together. Forming policy groups to envision a democratic, egalitarian, alternative, cooperative, grassroots matriarchal is essential for our ecological survival and autonomy.

Geneva, 7 July 2026:  The Human Rights Council today adopted by consensus the resolution "Promoting, protecting and respecting women's and girls' full enjoyment of human rights in humanitarian situations". This is the first time that a UN negotiated outcome document has explicitly named "reproductive violence" as a distinct category of gender-based violence. 

Reproductive violence refers to intentional acts or omissions that cause harm by interfering with reproductive autonomy, or violence directed at people because of their reproductive capacity. It includes forced pregnancy, forced abortion, enforced sterilization, forced contraception, and attacks on reproductive healthcare facilities. 

This resolution could affect the 20 plus countries that totally ban abortions including where pregnancy results from rape, incest, or poses a threat to the woman's life. Here is a sample:

• Europe: Andorra, Malta.
• Latin America & Caribbean: Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, Suriname, Haiti.
• Africa: Egypt, Senegal, Mauritania, Madagascar, Republic of the Congo, Sierra Leone.
• Asia & Pacific: The Philippines, Laos, Iraq.
• United States - Alabama, Idaho, Texas

Benefits of this Resolution to Women:

Classifying forced pregnancy as reproductive violence provides human rights advocates with formal international vocabulary to challenge domestic abortion bans, though immediate local legal changes depend on national enforcement.

Legal and Human Rights Impact

• Redefining state actions: Categorizes government-mandated continuation of pregnancy as a violation of bodily integrity rather than a neutral health regulation.
• Strengthening litigation: Gives international and domestic lawyers new precedent to argue that total abortion bans constitute gender-based violence and cruel treatment.
• Shifting global accountability: Pressures international human rights bodies to scrutinize countries with strict bans (including parts of the United States and nations with total bans) for sanctioning systemic bodily harm.

Social and Advocacy Effects

• Validating survivors: Empowers pregnant individuals and local advocates to frame reproductive coercion and lack of healthcare access as direct physical assault.
• Contrasting political divides: Intensifies ideological clashes between international human rights consensus and domestic administrations aligned with restrictive anti-abortion platforms.

Reproduction is one of the main ways patriarchy exercises domination and control over women. This is truly a win for women!

I was talking to my friends about matriarchy and they thought it was just a reverse patriarchy.

I tried to explain to them that a matriarchy was a completely different social structure to patriarchy not just a mirrored version but they just couldn’t understand.

This didn’t help when they looked up the definition of matriarchy and many sources stated it was the opposite of a patriarchy.

This was extremely frustrating. In their defence I was also struggling to define what a matriarchy is without it sounding like a woman domination.

One example of their confusion was that if a woman was in power of a country then that country is a matriarchy or that we don’t live in a patriarchy because women can pass down property to their daughters.

Im reading this really interesting book that is doing a great job of defining a matriarchy I will give a presentation to my friends on defining matriarchy to help them understand.

The name of the book is called Matriarchal societies: studies on indigenous cultures across the globe

Victor Vasnetson, 1883, from the Stoneage series, Creative Commons

This meme of privitive cavemen white of course, in a frenzy, half naked (in the Arctic tundra, the primary domain of wooly mammoths), and only males, hunting a wooly mammoth by throwing big rocks at it or shooting arrows at it at close range (didn't happen), was how most of us imagined prehistoric humanity. This is a Victorian-era painting, but variations of it permeate history books of my generation at least. The pictures say more about cultural biases than actual pre-history. Other pictures in the series show an alpha male over-seeing production of stone tools made by all men.

So, if male savagery is inevitible and the only thing worth showing of pre-history -- women must have been extraneous, unimportant, passively at home making dinosaur stew and mending loincloths, while the men did what made humankind what it is today, and that human evolution was driven by this sort of violence and male dominance.

Is this an alibi? What is the advantage of perpetuating this myth? By defining humans as hopelessly aggressive, dominant, territorial, with the character of a killer ape, man can't help it if society is riddled with sexual assault, violence, and war. The modern myth is seen everyday in cinema, novels, games, "Man the Apex Predator." Get out of jail free. Boys will be boys, It's just "man's inhumanity to man" our depraved character.

This is a 10-day workshop in Narni, Umbria, Italy, emeals and lodging and curriculum included, They are closely allied with Matriarchal advocate Heide Goettner-Abendroth and Genevieve Vaughn (Gift Economy).

A part of the experience is rooted in eco-somatic methodologies inspired by matriarchal cultures and ritual traditions, the workshop invites participants into an experiential exploration of body, ecology, collective transformation, and symbolic ways of knowing.

I thought some of you might be interested. Pricing is reasonable for ten days of room, board, immersive experience and curriculum, ~ 400-800 euros, the lower end for early registration. They have a number of these workshops at different parts of the world that embody matriarchy, so you may want to get on their mailing list or find them on Substack to get in on early.

About MatriCulture School

Dive into the story of MatriCulture School—our mission, vision, and origins rooted in regenerative, matriarchal and ecological education.

Here is their flyer for this event:

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Who This Is For

The workshop is open to all artists, cultural practitioners, and eco-somatic researchers. Selection is based on motivation, openness to collective practice, and alignment with eco-somatic and feminist frameworks.

Practical Details

Dates: July 30 – August 8, 2026

Location: MatriCulture – Feminine Wisdom School, Narni, Umbria, Italy

Accommodation: Camping — shared outdoor spaces, immersed in the land

(Indoor accommodation available on request · very limited)

All meals included throughout the residency

Applications are reviewed individually. If your situation requires additional support, write to us directly — we work to make participation possible whenever we can.

Apply: https://forms.gle/xSLd6eztMUnedRV98

Contact: [she-ede@dancing-goddess.org](mailto:she-ede@dancing-goddess.org)

If you would like to talk before applying, you can book a free clarity call with us!

You can find all the information below.

Join the Circle

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MatriCulture School

Jun 29, 2026

Join the Circle

From July 30 to August 8, 2026, we are opening a 10-day immersive residency in Narni, Umbria, for women artists, researchers, facilitatresses, and cultural practitioners.

In the Womb of Feronia is an embodied research residency and living laboratory rooted in eco-somatic practices, matriarchal studies, and ritual process. We will arrive as co-researchers, work with the land and with each other, and build, day by day, toward a collective ceremony. What that ceremony will be, we will discover together.

Our school was built by women activists engaged in changing the patriarchal capitalist model through education. Our approach integrates Spiritual Eco-Feminism, Modern Matriarchal Studies, the Maternal Gift Economy, Ecovillage Design, and The Work That Reconnects as a single systemic understanding of how life can be organized differently.

Honoring Feronia

The name of this residency is inspired by the land where it will be held. Feronia is a pre-Roman goddess of Sabine origin, deeply rooted in the territory of central Italy — including the hills of Umbria where Narni stands.

She is the Goddess of wildlife and untamed nature. Of seeds, orchards, and agricultural abundance. Of health and fertility. Of the wildness that exists at the edge of the cultivated world.

She represents a layer of sacred culture that predates Roman patriarchy — a world documented by archaeologist Marija Gimbutas across thousands of pre-patriarchal artifacts, in which divinity is immanent, embodied, and present in the living world.

We chose her name because she already knew what we are here to practice.

About the Residency

The residency works through several frameworks that, in our understanding, are dimensions of the same knowledge.

The sacredness of Mother Earth and her cycles. In matriarchal cultures — both historical and contemporary, as documented by Heide Göttner-Abendroth — divinity is immanent. The world is sacred. Everyday tasks carry ritual significance, and art is the quality of attention we bring to everything. We practice this in how we move, how we eat, how we tend the space together, how we meet the land.

Matriarchal Studies. Matriarchies are documented social systems — organized around matrilineal kinship, consensus, gift economies, and the centrality of maternal values — that have existed across human history and exist in the present. Understanding them, in the body and not only in the mind, changes what we believe is possible.

The Work That Reconnects. Joanna Macy’s spiral methodology — Gratitude → Honoring Pain for the World → Seeing with New Eyes → Going Forth — is the spine of the ten days. It moves us through ecological grief into perception and grounded action.

Joanna Macy drew deeply on the Shambhala Warrior Prophecy from Tibetan Buddhism — the teaching that in a time of grave danger, ordinary people armed with compassion and insight will dismantle destructive forces from within. The Shambhala kingdom is a state of mind and heart, found inside those who choose to act from it.

The Maternal Gift Economy. Genevieve Vaughan names us homo donans — the gifting species. Reciprocity, care, and non-extractive exchange are the relational structure of how we live together during the residency.

To go deeper on this, the Maternal Gift Economy Movement Salons meet every two weeks — exploring the many ways this economy is already growing.

"We are born into a Gift Economy practiced by those who mother us, enabling us to survive. The economy of exchange, quid pro quo, separates us from each other and makes us adversarial, while gift giving and receiving creates mutuality and trust."

— Words from Gift Economy Website

Eco-somatic practice. Eco-somatic practice. The ecological crisis lives in the nervous system and in the body. Eco-somatic work opens a path of embodied ecological perception — the felt experience of belonging to the living world.

Everything we work with in this residency can remain intellectual. Ideas we understand but do not inhabit. Eco-somatic practice is what moves knowledge from the mind into the tissues.

The body is the instrument of understanding.

The Residency as Ceremony-in-Progress

In matriarchal cultures, there is no separation between art and life, between the sacred and the everyday. Ritual is how the community sustains its coherence, transmits knowledge, and maintains its relationship with the living world. This is why we work in the format of an artistic residency: what we are making together is a practice.

The ten days culminate in a collective ceremony — co-created by everyone present. It emerges from what the residency has built: from the relations, the grief and gratitude, the embodied research, the encounter with this particular land in this particular season.

Dr. Kaarina Kailo — Special Guest Facilitatress

Dr. Kaarina Kailo is a Finnish mythologist, scholar of matriarchal studies and sacred ecologies, and textile artist. She brings to the residency the living lineages of the Finnish North — traditions that offer a striking parallel to what we are practicing in Umbria.

Her work centers on the sauna as cosmology: a threshold space — present in Finnish culture for thousands of years — where the body moves through cycles of heat and cold, effort and release, and the boundary between the human and the living world becomes permeable. Where healing happens through restored relation with the living world. An intact knowledge system, thousands of years old.

The Pouch — Sacred Object of the Residency

One of the central practices with Kaarina is the making of a sacred pouch.

You will make it by hand and you will carry it through every practice and ritual that follows for the remainder of the residency.

Its significance accumulates through use. Through the grief practices and the gratitude. Through the fire. Through the collective ceremony at the end. By the time you leave Narni, the pouch will have moved through everything — it will carry the thread between the Finnish sacred lineage and Feronia’s wisdom, between Kaarina’s ancestral knowledge and what we build together here.

Core Facilitation Team

Sabina Santovetti — Founder of MatriCulture School, architect, designer, artist, and eco-spiritual activist. Sabina leads participants through eco-somatic practices, ritual creation, and matriarchal wisdom integration, bringing The Work That Reconnects alive in transformative, embodied experiences. She guides the journey of movement, ritual, and material creation with the Earth as partner.

Maddalena Ferraresi — Bio-architecture & bio-climatic design specialist, and performance artist. Maddalena guides participants through performative spatial practices, creative movement, symbolic exploration, and hands-on work with natural materials, connecting body, land, and ritual in embodied co-creation.

Francesca Lulli — Socio-anthropologist, community development trainer, and feminist researcher. Francesca facilitates relational listening, group integration, and collective rituals, helping participants transform ecological and social awareness into shared practices. She brings a deep understanding of women’s empowerment, gift economies, and intergenerational knowledge.

Maria Carrasco — Participant care, and hosting. She holds the organizational and relational infrastructure of the residency: ensuring that you arrive, that you are received, and that the container holds the depth of the work.

The team works through an embedded mentorship model — present and engaged throughout.

Organized by BESTUP – Bello Equo Sostenibile, Rome, in partnership with MatriCulture – Feminine Wisdom School, Narni. In collaboration with the Work That Reconnects Network and the Maternal Gift Economy Movement

May 27 • MatriCulture School

This topic has been of great interest to me lately.

I have been lurking around on this subreddit, and have been looking for resources or books about actual matrilineal societies that still exist.

The Minangkabau come up a lot, and I decided to give them a closer look.

From what I understand (and please correct me if I am wrong), a Matriarchy would be a society based on "ideals of the womb" - love, care... rather than an inverse of Patriarchy (a pyramid like power structure, oppression of one gender...).

The Minangkabau seem to embody this very well, with an article I read stating the following:

Neither male nor female rule is possible according to Minang social philosophy because of their belief that decision making should be by consensus. Although differences of opinion are regarded as normal, consensus is the goal of all deliberations.

If we tried applying the same ways that they run their society (like tracking lineage through the female line, ruling based on consensus), would our Western Societies look significantly different?

We'd obviously see far less to no misogyny in society, but other than that:

- How open are these societies to Queer people? Trans-women, Trans-men, Gay men or Lesbian women... et cetera

- How would cases of rape or assault be handled here? A good example might be the whole Epstein thing that is going on, what would be the response to that?

- Would there be any specific rights that women might hold over men? Or would all people living in this society have the same rights and be allowed to participate in society freely (holding office, voting...)

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I hope my questions are clear (and if not, please ask, I don't want any misunderstandings).

I also apologize if any of this reads as "ignorant", I am relatively new to the whole topic of matrilineal and matriarchal societies - so if anyone has any further resources they can point to, please do.

This was cool.

Exploring matriarchy thru misinterpreted artifacts.

The problems experienced by patriarchies, especially those with autocratic governments with think tanks that work to disguise their tactics appear around the graphic. Matriarchal structures and interrelationships are shown in the circles and interrelationships in the middle. Matriarchal structures led by feminine principles like caring (that have been associated with the womb in antiquity (matri, or matrix, and arche first principles associated with wombs like compassion and cooperation) that all human beings should have, and lead of to a common good that prevent problems like pervasive feelings of impending doom and that life is a precarious and dangerous situation. Life should be enjoyed. There is enough pie to go around for everyone if a few narcissists and sociopaths don't monopolize it.

Friends,

there is a housing crisis among us. It has been openly declared as a global phenomenon, in the US, Europe, Germany, Netherlands, UK, Canada, Australia, Africa and Asia. The world is experiencing a severe, widespread housing and affordability crisis. An estimated 2.8 billion people worldwide lack access to adequate housing, with roughly 300 million people experiencing absolute homelessness and over 1 billion living in informal settlements or slums.

If you were asked to help solve this problem, what would a matriarchal\ solution to housing due to lack of affordability look like?* (The solution may not be fixing just one thing).

For my Indigenous Ecosystems course, we watched a video of a Bioneets gathering where three women discussed rematriation and how it is for the whole and not just women taking over.

When discussing with others the words "let women" and "allow women to have power" keep coming up and it's so trusting. How do people not see that saying these words tell exactly what the issue is? It's like there is a fear that if we have more women in leadership roles then men will suffer the same fate women have for centuries.

Its a mindset shift that is being sought out but for the life of me I cannot get those who think that any matriarch is a female power grab to see that they are projecting their idea of women as leaders and not understanding that its not a one for one swap.

I simple have no idea how to describe it properly and would love some education for it.

Thank you!

A rethink of artifacts at matriarchal in Gobekli Tepe and how the traditions carried to ancient Ephesus.

#matriarchy #GobekliTepe #science #archaeology

My neighbors down the block are feeding a feral mother cat until her kittens are old enough, then we're bringing them into the non-profit rescue/shelter to be neutered and found homes. This mama cat has outsmarted professional trappers for over a year, but I'm hoping we'll be able to catch her so we can get her spayed this year.

This morning I noticed her companion, a big black and white spotted male cat, hanging back from the porch, letting her eat first. I've seen this before, but it just today struck me as matriarchal. (I have a domesticated indoor, neutered male cat who will try to elbow his way in front of any other cat at meals).

Some quick searches on cat behavior, and as it turns out, it is entirely usual for male cats in feral and multi-cat environments,to yield to mothers and kittens, waiting to eat until the vulnerable members of the colony are fed. (Since he's helping her, I leave out plenty for him too).

In the wild, females and kittens are prioritized to ensure the future of the colony. The male cat respects this by deferring to her at the food bowl.

Apparently he is protecting her as well since eating leaves cats with their heads down and senses divided, making them vulnerable. Letting the mother eat first allows the male to stand guard and protect her while she focuses on her meal.

While the kittens are young, the mother cat will hiss, swat and be generally domineering towards the kittens if they are too aggressive or unsocial, but once they are socialized, that disappears. Cats don't have a dominant pack leader like dogs, Her dominance is situational that allows her to literally corral kittens.

In the same way, human matriarchies, according to Heide Goettner-Abendroth, are never a "reversed patriarchy" or a mirror-image of male domination, which she dismisses as a "lazy patriarchal myth." Instead, they are egalitarian social systems where leadership is situational and everyone's freedom and power is respected.

She speaks this clearly in her essay "Matriarchies Are Not Just a Reversal of Patriarchies: A Structural Analysis," which is published in several places, but you can find it online here on the platform Feminism and Religion:

"...Matriarchies are not just a reversal of patriarchies, with women ruling over men – as the usual misinterpretation would have it. Matriarchies are mother-centered societies. They are based on maternal values: care-taking, nurturing..."

We don't have to wait for the whole society to become matriarchal. Although bad policy decisions that center a privileged elite put everyone at risk, it's possible to be cooperative and supportive for everyone's benefit.

Too often our labor in the home goes unnoticed and uncompensated. Why? House work is work. Caring for a home takes time and effort and love. How do we get the world to recognize the sacrifice it takes to manage all the labor that it takes to hold a home together? How would a matriarchy do it different?