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135-596: Matriarchy is a social system in which positions of dominance and privilege are held by women . In a broader sense it can also extend to moral authority , social privilege , and control of property. While those definitions apply in general English, definitions specific to anthropology and feminism differ in some respects. Matriarchies may also be confused with matrilineal , matrilocal , and matrifocal societies. While some may consider any non-patriarchal system to be matriarchal, most academics exclude those systems from matriarchies as strictly defined. According to

270-461: A Naval Reserve Officers Training Corps student at Tufts University , where he received an undergraduate degree in naval science in 1946. He completed active service as Gunnery officer of the USS Quirinus at the rank of lieutenant (junior grade) in 1947. Moynihan then returned to Tufts, where he completed a second undergraduate degree in sociology cum laude in 1948 and earned an MA from

405-685: A longshoreman before entering the City College of New York (CCNY), which at that time provided free higher education to city residents. He also had a half-brother, Thomas Joseph Stapelfeld, born on June 28, 1941, to their mother and Henry Charles Stapelfeld. Following a year at CCNY, Moynihan joined the United States Navy in 1944. He was assigned to the V-12 Navy College Training Program at Middlebury College from 1944 to 1945 and then enrolled as

540-477: A prehistoric matriarchal Golden Age , according to Barbara Epstein, "matriarchy ... means a social system organized around matriliny and goddess worship in which women have positions of power." According to Adler, in the Marxist tradition, it usually refers to a pre-class society "where women and men share equally in production and power." According to Adler, "a number of feminists note that few definitions of

675-404: A racialized social system. Some academics have criticized the idea that the group of white people constitute a meaningful group for such analysis. Iris Marion Young distinguished between the notions of "group" and "series", with a "group" being defined by one's own acknowledgment of being a member and a series being a passive social reality. Lewis argues that most groups of white people are

810-472: A " negative income tax or guaranteed minimum income " for families that met work requirements or demonstrated that they were seeking work which ultimately stalled in the Senate despite prefiguring the later Supplemental Security Income program) led to frequent clashes (belying their unwavering mutual respect) with Nixon's principal domestic policy advisor, conservative economist and Cabinet-rank Counselor to

945-532: A "social system" on the mass network of communication between people and defined society itself as an "autopoietic" system, meaning a self-referential and self-reliant system that is distinct from its environment. Luhmann considered social systems as belonging to three categories: societal systems, organizations, and interaction systems. Luhmann considered societal systems, such as religion, law, art, education, science, etc., to be closed systems consisting of different fields of interaction. Organizations were defined as

1080-474: A "woman-centered" society surrounding Mother Goddess worship during prehistory (in Paleolithic and Neolithic Europe ) and in ancient civilizations by using the term matristic rather than matriarchal. Marija Gimbutas states that she uses "the term matristic simply to avoid the term matriarchy with the understanding that it incorporates matriliny." Matrilineality , in which descent is traced through

1215-666: A New York Democrat who had some friends who worked on the docks and drank beer after work." He also worked for two years as a civilian employee at RAF South Ruislip . He ultimately received his PhD in history from Tufts (with a dissertation on the relationship between the United States and the International Labour Organization ) from the Fletcher School in 1961 while serving as an assistant professor of political science and director of

1350-434: A central role in these practices ' ". Journalist Margot Adler wrote, "literally, ... [" matriarchy "] means government by mothers, or more broadly, government and power in the hands of women." Barbara Love and Elizabeth Shanklin wrote, "by 'matriarchy,' we mean a non-alienated society: a society in which women, those who produce the next generation, define motherhood, determine the conditions of motherhood, and determine

1485-432: A debate over the proper course for government to take with regard to the economic underclass, especially blacks. Critics on the left attacked it as " blaming the victim ", a slogan coined by psychologist William Ryan . Some suggested that Moynihan was propagating the views of racists because much of the press coverage of the report focused on the discussion of children being born out of wedlock. Despite Moynihan's warnings,

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1620-429: A family could be traced only through the female line. This was a materialist interpretation of Bachofen's Mutterrecht . Engels speculated that the domestication of animals increased material wealth, which was claimed by men. Engels said that men wanted to control women to use as laborers and to pass on wealth to their children, requiring monogamy; as patriarchy rose, women's status declined until they became mere objects in

1755-522: A form of racism. Moynihan's wife Liz later recalled being approached in the UN galleries by Palestine Liberation Organization Permanent Observer Zuhdi Labib Terzi during the controversy. He made a remark of which she later did not remember the exact phrasing, but rendered it approximately as 'you must have mixed feelings about remembering events in New Delhi', which she and biographer Gil Troy interpreted as

1890-543: A freak ... with her ... savage, violent streak." The Hopi (in what is now the Hopi Reservation in northeastern Arizona ), according to Alice Schlegel , had as its "gender ideology ... one of female superiority, and it operated within a social actuality of sexual equality." According to LeBow (based on Schlegel's work), in the Hopi, "gender roles ... are egalitarian .... [and] [n]either sex

2025-532: A government research project centered around Averell Harriman 's papers at Syracuse University 's Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs . Moynihan's political career started in the 1950s, when he served as a member of New York Governor Averell Harriman 's staff in a variety of positions (including speechwriter and acting secretary to the governor). He met his future wife, Elizabeth (Liz) Brennan, who also worked on Harriman's staff. This period ended following Harriman's loss to Nelson Rockefeller in

2160-722: A hell of a problem, and we do." By the 1964 presidential election , Moynihan was recognized as a political ally of Robert F. Kennedy . For this reason he was not favored by then-President Johnson, and he left the Johnson Administration in 1965. He ran for office in the Democratic Party primary for the presidency of the New York City Council , a position now known as the New York City Public Advocate . However, he

2295-433: A king is sufficient to constitute female government, given the amount of participation of other men in most such governments. One view is that it is sufficient. "By the end of [Queen] Elizabeth's reign, gynecocracy was a fait accompli ", according to historian Paula Louise Scalingi. Gynecocracy is defined by Scalingi as "government by women", similar to dictionary definitions (one dictionary adding 'women's social supremacy' to

2430-413: A little in their additional meanings, so that gynecocracy also means 'women's social supremacy', gynaecocracy also means 'government by one woman', 'female dominance', and, derogatorily, 'petticoat government', and gynocracy also means 'women as the ruling class'. Gyneocracy is rarely used in modern times. None of these definitions are limited to mothers. Some question whether a queen ruling without

2565-437: A memo to President Nixon saying, "The time may have come when the issue of race could benefit from a period of 'benign neglect'. The subject has been too much talked about. The forum has been too much taken over to hysterics, paranoids, and boodlers on all sides. We need a period in which Negro progress continues and racial rhetoric fades." Moynihan regretted that, as he saw it, critics misinterpreted his memo as advocating that

2700-432: A network of decisions which reproduce themselves; his definition is difficult to apply in terms of finding a real-world example. Finally, interaction systems are systems that reproduce themselves on the basis of co-presence rather than decision making. Jay Wright Forrester founded the field of system dynamics , which deals with the simulation of interactions in dynamic systems. In his work on social systems, he discusses

2835-413: A part of his AGIL paradigm . He defined a social system as only a segment (or a "subsystem") of what he called action theory . Parsons organized social systems in terms of action units, where one action executed by an individual is one unit. He defines a social system as a network of interactions between actors. According to Parsons, social systems rely on a system of language, and culture must exist in

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2970-409: A position to control and dispense power... not unlike the nagging wife or the domineering mother." A matrilocal society defines a society in which a couple resides close to the bride's family rather than the bridegroom's family. Most anthropologists hold that there are no known societies that are unambiguously matriarchal. According to J. M. Adovasio , Olga Soffer, and Jake Page, no true matriarchy

3105-459: A pragmatic issue: "resolution against Zionism not only affected Israel but every Zionist people, which included the majority of American Jews", which became clear when that community promoted a touristic boycott against Mexico as a consequence of its vote for the approval of the Resolution. In his book, Moynihan's Moment , Gil Troy posits that Moynihan's 1975 UN speech opposing the resolution

3240-596: A quarter century. On February 18, 1974, he presented to the Government of India a check for 16,640,000,000 rupees, then equivalent to $ 2,046,700,000, which was the greatest amount paid by a single check in the history of banking. The "Rupee Deal" is logged in the Guinness Book of World Records for the world's largest check, presented to India's Secretary of Economic Affairs. In June 1975, Moynihan accepted his third offer to serve as United States Ambassador to

3375-424: A reluctance to accept the existence of matriarchies might be based on a specific culturally biased notion of how to define matriarchy: because in a patriarchy men rule over women, a matriarchy has frequently been conceptualized as women ruling over men, while she believed that matriarchies are egalitarian . The word matriarchy, for a society politically led by females, especially mothers, who also control property,

3510-477: A second extended leave because of his public service in 1973, his faculty line was transferred to the university's Department of Government, where he remained until 1977. From 1966 to 1969, he also held a secondary administrative appointment as director of the Harvard–MIT Joint Center for Urban Studies . With turmoil and riots in the United States, Moynihan, "a national board member of ADA incensed at

3645-550: A series rather in this sense rather than a group. The problem with studying social systems is the difficulty of forming and testing theories; social systems are manipulated or controlled and large-scale systems cannot be reproduced in a lab setting. However, the rapid increase in the availability of digital data over the last decade gives scientists studying the behaviors of social systems very detailed and much more holistic pictures of how social systems respond to various events and how networked social systems behave. Additionally,

3780-426: A social system depend on various shared properties such as location, socioeconomic status, race, religion, societal function, or other distinguishable features. The study of social systems is integral to the fields of sociology and public policy. Social systems have been studied for as long as sociology has existed. Talcott Parsons was the first to formulate a systematic theory of social systems, which he did as

3915-442: A society in order for it to qualify as a social system. Parsons' work laid the foundations for the rest of the study of social systems theory and ignited the debate over what framework social systems should be built around, such as actions, communication, or other relationships. Niklas Luhmann was a prominent sociologist and social systems theorist who laid the foundations of modern social system thought. He based his definition of

4050-402: A stage of primal matriarchy"] persuasive." Kurt Derungs is a recent non-academic author advocating an "anthropology of landscape" based on allegedly matriarchal traces in toponymy and folklore. Friedrich Engels , in 1884, claimed that, in the earliest stages of human social development, there was group marriage and that therefore paternity was disputable, whereas maternity was not, so that

4185-571: A threatening reference to a failed assassination plan against her husband two years earlier. But the American public responded enthusiastically to his moral outrage over the resolution; his condemnation of the "Zionism is Racism" resolution brought him celebrity status and helped him win a US Senate seat a year later. Moynihan opposed the resolution because he thought it was completely false and perverse. Also, his years in New York sensitized him on

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4320-567: A trace. ' " Social system In sociology , a social system is the patterned network of relationships constituting a coherent whole that exist between individuals, groups, and institutions. It is the formal structure of role and status that can form in a small, stable group. An individual may belong to multiple social systems at once; examples of social systems include nuclear family units, communities , cities , nations , college campuses , religions , corporations , and industries . The organization and definition of groups within

4455-645: A transition from matriarchal to patriarchal religion in very early historical times. From the 1950s, Marija Gimbutas developed a theory of an Old European culture in Neolithic Europe with matriarchal traits, which had been replaced by the patriarchal system of the Proto-Indo-Europeans in the Bronze Age . However, other anthropologists warned that "the goddess worship or matrilocality that evidently existed in many paleolithic societies

4590-569: A weak realist state in decline. He believed it was most motivated by self-preservation. This view would influence his thinking in subsequent years, when he became an outspoken proponent of the then-unpopular view that the Soviet Union was a failed state headed for implosion. Nevertheless, Moynihan's tenure at the UN marked the beginnings of a more bellicose, neoconservative American foreign policy that turned away from Kissinger's unabashedly covert, détente -driven realpolitik . Although it

4725-555: A wide-ranging matriarchal society prior to the ancient cultures of which we are aware. After Bachofen's three-volume Myth, Religion, and Mother Right , classicists such as Harrison, Arthur Evans , Walter Burkert , and James Mellaart looked at the evidence of matriarchal religion in pre-Hellenic societies. The concept was further investigated by Lewis Morgan. According to Uwe Wesel, Bachofen's myth interpretations have proved to be untenable. According to historian Susan Mann , as of 2000, "few scholars these days find ... [a "notion of

4860-491: Is also the public formation in which the woman occupies the ruling position in a family. Some, including Daniel Moynihan , claimed that there is a matriarchy among Black families in the United States, because a quarter of them were headed by single women; thus, families composing a substantial minority of a substantial minority could be enough for the latter to constitute a matriarchy within a larger non-matriarchal society with non-matriarchal political dynamics. Etymologically, it

4995-452: Is from Latin māter (genitive mātris ), "mother" and Greek ἄρχειν arkhein , "to rule". The notion of matriarchy was defined by Joseph-François Lafitau (1681–1746), who first named it ginécocratie . According to the OED , the earliest known attestation of the word matriarchy is in 1885. By contrast, gynæcocracy , meaning 'rule of women', has been in use since the 17th century, building on

5130-422: Is inferior." LeBow concluded that Hopi women "participate fully in ... political decision-making." According to Schlegel, "the Hopi no longer live as they are described here" and "the attitude of female superiority is fading". Schlegel said the Hopi "were and still are matrilineal" and "the household ... was matrilocal". Schlegel explains why there was female superiority as that the Hopi believed in "life as

5265-652: Is known to have actually existed. Anthropologist Joan Bamberger argued that the historical record contains no primary sources on any society in which women dominated. Anthropologist Donald Brown 's list of human cultural universals ( viz. , features shared by nearly all current human societies) includes men being the "dominant element" in public political affairs, which he asserts is the contemporary opinion of mainstream anthropology . There are some disagreements and possible exceptions. A belief that women's rule preceded men's rule was, according to Haviland, "held by many nineteenth-century intellectuals". The hypothesis survived into

5400-484: Is never ignored and that the sacred status of goddesses does not automatically increase female social status, and she interprets utopian matriarchy as an invented inversion of antifeminism . From the 1970s, ideas of matriarchy were taken up by popular writers of second-wave feminism such as Riane Eisler , Elizabeth Gould Davis , and Merlin Stone , and expanded with the speculations of Margaret Murray on witchcraft , by

5535-478: Is not emphasized in third-wave feminism . J.F. del Giorgio insists on a matrifocal, matrilocal, matrilineal Paleolithic society. According to Rohrlich, "many scholars are convinced that Crete was a matriarchy, ruled by a queen-priestess" and the "Cretan civilization" was "matriarchal" before "1500 BC," when it was overrun and colonized by the patriarchy. Also according to Rohrlich, "in the early Sumerian city-states 'matriarchy seems to have left something more than

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5670-413: Is often interpreted to mean the general opposite of patriarchy, but it is not an opposite. According to Peoples and Bailey, the view of anthropologist Peggy Reeves Sanday is that matriarchies are not a mirror or inverted form of patriarchies but rather that a matriarchy "emphasizes maternal meanings where 'maternal symbols are linked to social practices influencing the lives of both sexes and where women play

5805-700: Is probably a reflection from the practice of matriarchy which at all times characterized Elamite civilization to a greater or lesser degree, before this practice was overthrown by the patriarchy". Tacitus claimed in his book Germania that in "the nations of the Sitones woman is the ruling sex." Anne Helene Gjelstad describes the women on the Estonian islands Kihnu and Manija as "the last matriarchal society in Europe" because "the older women here take care of almost everything on land as their husbands travel

5940-436: Is sometimes used, and, while more accurate, still does not reflect the full complexity of their social organization. In fact, it is not easy to categorize Mosuo culture within traditional Western definitions. They have aspects of a matriarchal culture: women are often the head of the house, inheritance is through the female line, and women make business decisions. However, unlike in a true matriarchy, political power tends to be in

6075-403: Is that some policies which may work in the long run may aggravate an issue in the short run. A successful policy according to Forrester must target the correct leverage points, in this case the aspect of the social problem which, if modified, will produce a sizeable enough effect to correct the problem. Eduardo Bonilla-Silva referred to the social relationships between different racial groups as

6210-434: Is the 'dominant or exclusive focus on women', is opposed to androcentrism , and "invert[s] ... the privilege of the ... [male/female] binary ...[,] [some feminists] arguing for 'the superiority of values embodied in traditionally female experience'". Some people who sought evidence for the existence of a matriarchy often mixed matriarchy with anthropological terms and concepts describing specific arrangements in

6345-500: The Oxford English Dictionary ( OED ), matriarchy is a "form of social organization in which the mother or oldest female is the head of the family, and descent and relationship are reckoned through the female line; government or rule by a woman or women." A popular definition, according to James Peoples and Garrick Bailey, is "female dominance". Within the academic discipline of cultural anthropology , according to

6480-537: The Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) program included rules for payments only if no "Man [was] in the house." Critics of the program's structure, including Moynihan, said that the nation was paying poor women to throw their husbands out of the house. After the 1994 Republican sweep of Congress , Moynihan agreed that correction was needed for a welfare system that possibly encouraged women to raise their children without fathers: "The Republicans are saying we have

6615-628: The Communications Decency Act ; and the North American Free Trade Agreement . He was critical of proposals to replace the progressive income tax with a flat tax . Moynihan also voted against authorization of the Gulf War . Despite his earlier writings on the negative effects of the welfare state, he ended by voting against welfare reform in 1996, a bill that removed unemployment benefits. He

6750-733: The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy in 1949. After failing the Foreign Service Officer exam, he continued his doctoral studies at the Fletcher School as a Fulbright fellow at the London School of Economics from 1950 to 1953. During this period, Moynihan struggled with writer's block and began to fashion himself as a " dandy ", cultivating "a taste for Savile Row suits, rococo conversational riffs and Churchillian oratory" even as he maintained that "nothing and no one at LSE ever disposed me to be anything but

6885-515: The Goddess movement , and in feminist Wicca . "A Golden Age of matriarchy" was prominently presented by Charlene Spretnak and "encouraged" by Stone and Eisler, but, at least for the Neolithic Age, it has been denounced as feminist wishful thinking in works such as The Inevitability of Patriarchy , Why Men Rule , Goddess Unmasked , and The Myth of Matriarchal Prehistory . The idea

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7020-619: The North American Free Trade Agreement , and the Congressional authorization for the Gulf War . He was tied with Jacob K. Javits as the longest-serving Senator from the state of New York until they were both surpassed by Chuck Schumer in 2023. Moynihan was born in Tulsa, Oklahoma , the son of Margaret Ann (née Phipps), a homemaker, and John Henry Moynihan, a reporter for a daily newspaper in Tulsa but originally from Indiana. He moved at

7155-715: The OED , matriarchy is a "culture or community in which such a system prevails" or a "family, society, organization, etc., dominated by a woman or women" without reference to laws that require women to dominate. In general anthropology, according to William A. Haviland, matriarchy is "rule by women". According to Lawrence A. Kuzner in 1997, A. R. Radcliffe-Brown argued in 1924 that the definitions of matriarchy and patriarchy had "logical and empirical failings (...) [and] were too vague to be scientifically useful". Most academics exclude egalitarian nonpatriarchal systems from matriarchies more strictly defined. According to Heide Göttner-Abendroth ,

7290-1008: The San Francisco Federal Building and the United States Courthouse in Austin, Texas . He was then appointed as Assistant Secretary of Labor for Policy, Planning and Research, serving from 1963 to 1965 under Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson . In this capacity, he did not have operational responsibilities. He devoted his time to trying to formulate national policy for what would become the War on Poverty . His small staff included Ralph Nader . They took inspiration from historian Stanley Elkins 's Slavery: A Problem in American Institutional and Intellectual Life (1959). Elkins essentially contended that slavery had made black Americans dependent on

7425-637: The Senate Finance Committee from 1993 to 1995. He also led the Moynihan Secrecy Commission , which studied the regulation of classified information. He emerged as a strong critic of President Ronald Reagan 's foreign policy and opposed President Bill Clinton 's health care plan . He frequently broke with liberal positions, but opposed welfare reform in the 1990s. He also voted against the Defense of Marriage Act ,

7560-531: The Tax Reform Act of 1986 , which cost certain professionals (like computer programmers, engineers, draftspersons, and designers) who depended on intermediary agencies (consulting firms) a self-employed tax status option, but other professionals (like accountants and lawyers) continued to enjoy Section 530 exemptions from payroll taxes. This change in the tax code was expected to offset the tax revenue losses of other legislation that Moynihan proposed to change

7695-521: The War on Poverty . In 1965, he published the controversial Moynihan Report on black poverty. Moynihan left the Johnson administration in 1965 and became a professor at Harvard University . In 1969, he accepted Nixon's offer to serve as an Assistant to the President for Domestic Policy, and he was elevated to the position of Counselor to the President later that year. He left the administration at

7830-508: The greenhouse effect as suitable international challenges to be dealt by NATO. NATO was chosen, since the organization had suitable expertise in the field, as well as experience with international research coordination. The German government was skeptical and saw the initiative as an attempt by the US to regain international terrain after the lost Vietnam War . The topics gained momentum in civil conferences and institutions. In 1970, Moynihan wrote

7965-408: The welfare rolls. These recipients were families with children but only one parent (almost invariably the mother). The laws at that time permitted such families to receive welfare payments in certain parts of the United States. Moynihan issued his research in 1965 under the title The Negro Family: The Case For National Action , now commonly known as The Moynihan Report . Moynihan's report fueled

8100-633: The 1861 book by Bachofen, Mother Right: An Investigation of the Religious and Juridical Character of Matriarchy in the Ancient World . Several generations of ethnologists were inspired by his pseudo-evolutionary theory of archaic matriarchy. Following him and Jane Ellen Harrison , several generations of scholars, usually arguing from known myths or oral traditions and examination of Neolithic female cult-figures, suggested that many ancient societies might have been matriarchal, or even that there existed

8235-526: The 1958 general election. Moynihan returned to academia, serving as a lecturer for brief periods at Russell Sage College (1957–1958) and the Cornell University School of Industrial and Labor Relations (1959) before taking a tenure-track position at Syracuse University (1959–1961). During this period, Moynihan was a delegate to the 1960 Democratic National Convention as part of John F. Kennedy 's delegate pool. Moynihan first served in

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8370-410: The 20th century and was notably advanced in the context of feminism and especially second-wave feminism , but the hypothesis is mostly discredited today, most experts saying that it was never true. Matriarchs, according to Peoples and Bailey, do exist; there are "individual matriarchs of families and kin groups." The Cambridge Ancient History (1975) stated that "the predominance of a supreme goddess

8505-521: The Chinese. According to Seekins, "in [the year] 40, Trung Trac was proclaimed queen, and a capital was built for her" and modern Vietnam considers the Trung sisters to be heroines. According to Karen G. Turner, in the third century A.D., Lady Triệu "seem[ed] ... to personify the matriarchal culture that mitigated Confucianized patriarchal norms .... [although] she is also painted as something of

8640-824: The Council of Urban Affairs (later the Urban Affairs Council), a forerunner of the Domestic Policy Council envisaged as an analog to the United States National Security Council . As one of the few people in Nixon's inner circle who had done academic research related to social policies, he was very influential in the early months of the administration. However, his disdain for "traditional budget-conscious positions" (including his proposed Family Assistance Plan ,

8775-550: The Environmental Protection Agency . In the mid-1990s, Moynihan was one of the Democrats to support the ban on the procedure known as partial-birth abortion . He said of the procedure: "I think this is just too close to infanticide . A child has been born and it has exited the uterus . What on Earth is this procedure?" Earlier in his career in the Senate, Moynihan had expressed his annoyance with

8910-509: The Family Assistance Plan stalled in the Senate Finance Committee . On November 24, 1970, he refused a second offer from Nixon due to potential familial strain and ongoing financial problems; depression stemming from the repudiation of the Family Assistance Plan by liberal Democrats; and the inability to effect change due to static policy directives in the position, which he considered to be a tertiary role behind Assistant to

9045-536: The Greek word γυναικοκρατία found in Aristotle and Plutarch . Terms with similar etymology are also used in various social sciences and humanities to describe matriarchal or matriological aspects of social, cultural, and political processes. Adjective matriological is derived from the noun matriology that comes from Latin word māter (mother) and Greek word λογος ( logos , teaching about). The term matriology

9180-505: The Iroquois were absolutely dependent upon the crops they grew, whoever controlled this vital activity wielded great power within our communities. It was our belief that since women were the givers of life they naturally regulated the feeding of our people....In all countries, real wealth stems from the control of land and its resources. Our Iroquois philosophers knew this as well as we knew natural law. To us it made sense for women to control

9315-487: The Kennedy administration as special (1961–1962) and executive (1962–1963) assistant to Labor Secretaries Arthur J. Goldberg and W. Willard Wirtz . In 1962, he authored the directive "Guiding Principles for Federal Architecture", which discouraged use of an official style for federal buildings , and has been credited with enabling "a wide ranging set of innovative public building projects" in subsequent decades, including

9450-546: The League's political decision-making, including deciding whether to proceed to war, through what may have been a matriarchy or gyneocracy. According to Doug George-Kanentiio, in this society, mothers exercise central moral and political roles. The dates of this constitution's operation are unknown; the League was formed in approximately 1000–1450, but the constitution was oral until written in about 1880. The League still exists. George-Kanentiio explains: In our society, women are

9585-609: The President Arthur F. Burns . While formulating the Family Assistance Plan proposal, Moynihan conducted significant discussions concerning a Basic Income Guarantee with Russell B. Long and Louis O. Kelso . Although Moynihan was promoted to Counselor to the President for Urban Affairs with Cabinet rank shortly after Burns was nominated by Nixon to serve as Chair of the Federal Reserve in October 1969, it

9720-482: The President for National Security Affairs Henry Kissinger and United States Secretary of State William P. Rogers . Instead, he commuted from Harvard as a part-time member of the United States delegation during the ambassadorship of George H. W. Bush . In 1973, Moynihan (who was circumspect toward the administration's "tilt" to Pakistan) accepted Nixon's offer to serve as United States Ambassador to India , where he would remain until 1975. The relationship between

9855-653: The President in 1997. As part of the effort, Moynihan secured release from the Federal Bureau of Investigation of its classified Venona file. This file documents the FBI's joint counterintelligence investigation, with the United States Signals Intelligence Service , into Soviet espionage within the United States. Much of the information had been collected and classified as secret information for over 50 years. After release of

9990-420: The UN, did at least on one occasion allow his advocacy to escalate into a physical attack. Senator Kit Bond , nearing retirement in 2010, recalled with some embarrassment in a conversation on civility in political discourse that Moynihan had once "slugged [Bond] on the Senate floor after Bond denounced an earmark Moynihan had slipped into a highway appropriations bill. Some months later Moynihan apologized, and

10125-617: The United Nations, a position (including a rotation as President of the United Nations Security Council ) that he would only hold until February 1976. Under President Gerald Ford , Ambassador Moynihan took a hardline anti-communist stance, in line with the agenda of the White House at the time. He was also a strong supporter of Israel, condemning UN Resolution 3379 , which declared Zionism to be

10260-497: The United States' ambassador to India and to the United Nations. Born in Tulsa, Oklahoma , Moynihan moved at a young age to New York City. Following a stint in the navy, he earned a Ph.D. in history from Tufts University . He worked on the staff of New York Governor W. Averell Harriman before joining President John F. Kennedy 's administration in 1961. He served as an Assistant Secretary of Labor under Presidents Kennedy and President Lyndon B. Johnson , devoting much of his time to

10395-460: The adamantly pro-choice interest groups petitioning him and others on the issue. He challenged them saying, "you women are ruining the Democratic Party with your insistence on abortion ." Moynihan broke with orthodox liberal positions of his party on numerous occasions. As chairman of the Senate Finance Committee in the 1990s, he strongly opposed President Bill Clinton 's proposal to expand health care coverage to all Americans . Seeking to focus

10530-410: The administration. Haldeman's maneuvering situated Moynihan in a more peripheral context as the administration's "resident thinker" on domestic affairs for the duration of his service. In 1969, on Nixon's initiative, NATO tried to establish a third civil column, establishing a hub of research and initiatives in the civil area, dealing as well with environmental topics. Moynihan named acid rain and

10665-629: The aftermath of the [C]old [W]ar. Huge changes took place, some of which we hardly notice." In 1981 he and fellow Irish-American politicians Senator Ted Kennedy and Speaker of the House Tip O'Neill co-founded the Friends of Ireland , a bipartisan organization of Senators and Representatives who opposed the ongoing sectarian violence and aimed to promote peace and reconciliation in Northern Ireland. Moynihan introduced Section 1706 of

10800-719: The age of six with his Irish Catholic family to New York City. Brought up in the working class neighborhood of Hell's Kitchen , he shined shoes and attended various public , private, and parochial schools, ultimately graduating from Benjamin Franklin High School in East Harlem . He was a parishioner of St. Raphael's Church , where he also cast his first vote. He and his brother, Michael Willard Moynihan, spent most of their childhood summers at their grandfather's farm in Bluffton, Indiana . Moynihan briefly worked as

10935-417: The center of all things. Nature, we believe, has given women the ability to create; therefore it is only natural that women be in positions of power to protect this function....We traced our clans through women; a child born into the world assumed the clan membership of its mother. Our young women were expected to be physically strong....The young women received formal instruction in traditional planting....Since

11070-791: The classics did not think that gyneocracy meant 'female government' in politics. They were aware of the fact that the sexual structure of government had no relation to domestic rule and to roles of both sexes. A matriarchy is also sometimes called a gynarchy , a gynocracy , a gynecocracy , or a gynocentric society, although these terms do not definitionally emphasize motherhood. Cultural anthropologist Jules de Leeuwe argued that some societies were "mainly gynecocratic " (others being "mainly androcratic "). Gynecocracy, gynaecocracy, gynocracy, gyneocracy, and gynarchy generally mean 'government by women over women and men'. All of these words are synonyms in their most important definitions, and while these words all share that principal meaning, they differ

11205-499: The debate over health insurance on the financing of health care, Moynihan garnered controversy by stating that "there is no health care crisis in this country." On other issues though, he was much more progressive. He voted against the death penalty; the flag desecration amendment ; the balanced budget amendment , the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act ; the Defense of Marriage Act ;

11340-500: The development and popularity of social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter offer new ways to study the evolution of social systems and social networking behaviors with social graphs . Even though the behaviors of these systems may be surprising or not yet well understood, the digital age offers a new frontier for the study of social systems. Notable past models are the WORLD2 and WORLD3 models: these both aimed to outline

11475-545: The dominant society, and that such dependence still existed a century later after the American Civil War. Moynihan and his staff believed that government must go beyond simply ensuring that members of minority groups have the same rights as the majority and must also "act affirmatively" in order to counter the problem of historic discrimination. Moynihan's research of Labor Department data demonstrated that even as fewer people were unemployed, more people were joining

11610-444: The double kinship system, which developed there .... [and which] combined matrilineal and patrilineal patterns of family structure and assigned equal importance to both lines." Chiricosta said that other scholars relied on "this 'matriarchal' aspect of the myth to differentiate Vietnamese society from the pervasive spread of Chinese Confucian patriarchy," and that "resistance to China's colonization of Vietnam ... [combined with]

11745-490: The end of 1970, and accepted appointment as United States Ambassador to India in 1973. He accepted President Gerald Ford 's appointment to the position of United States Ambassador to the United Nations in 1975, holding that position until early 1976; later that year he won election to the Senate. Moynihan served as Chairman of the Senate Environment Committee from 1992 to 1993 and as Chairman of

11880-438: The environment in which the next generation is reared." According to Cynthia Eller , "'matriarchy' can be thought of ... as a shorthand description for any society in which women's power is equal or superior to men's and in which the culture centers around values and life events described as 'feminine.'" Eller wrote that the idea of matriarchy mainly rests on two pillars, romanticism and modern social criticism. With respect to

12015-428: The exchange trade between men, causing the global defeat of the female sex and the rise of individualism and competition. According to Eller, Engels may have been influenced with respect to women's status by August Bebel , according to whom matriarchy naturally resulted in communism , while patriarchy was characterized by exploitation. Austrian writer Bertha Diener (or Helen Diner), wrote Mothers and Amazons (1930),

12150-455: The fact that Trung Trac's mother's tomb and spirit temple have survived, although nothing remains of her father", and the "society of the Trung sisters" was "strongly matrilineal". According to Donald M. Seekins, an indication of "the strength of matriarchal values" was that a woman, Trưng Trắc , with her younger sister Trưng Nhị , raised an army of "over 80,000 soldiers ... [in which] many of her officers were women", with which they defeated

12285-616: The female line, is sometimes conflated with historical matriarchy. Sanday favors redefining and reintroducing the word matriarchy , especially in reference to contemporary matrilineal societies such as the Minangkabau . The 19th-century belief that matriarchal societies existed was due to the transmission of "economic and social power ... through kinship lines" so that "in a matrilineal society all power would be channeled through women. Women may not have retained all power and authority in such societies ..., but they would have been in

12420-528: The field of family relationships and the organization of family life, such as matrilineality and matrilocality. These terms refer to intergenerational relationships (as matriarchy may), but do not distinguish between males and females insofar as they apply to specific arrangements for sons as well as daughters from the perspective of their relatives on their mother's side. Accordingly, these concepts do not represent matriarchy as 'power of women over men' but instead familial dynamics. Anthropologists have begun to use

12555-446: The first work to focus on women's cultural history, a classic of feminist matriarchal study. Her view is that all past human societies were originally matriarchal, while most later shifted to patriarchy and degenerated. The controversy intensified with The White Goddess by Robert Graves (1948) and his later analysis of classical Greek mythology, focusing on the reconstruction of earlier myths that had conjecturally been rewritten after

12690-641: The general election. He also was nominated by the Liberal Party of New York . Shortly after election, Moynihan analyzed the State of New York's budget to determine whether it was paying out more in federal taxes than it received in spending . Finding that it was, he produced a yearly report known as the Fisc (from the French ). Moynihan's strong support for Israel while UN Ambassador inspired support for him among

12825-400: The governing role). Scalingi reported arguments for and against the validity of gynocracy and said, "the humanists treated the question of female rule as part of the larger controversy over sexual equality." Possibly, queenship, because of the power wielded by men in leadership and assisting a queen, leads to queen bee syndrome , contributing to the difficulty of other women in becoming heads of

12960-463: The government should neglect minorities. Following the October 1969 reorganization of the White House domestic policy staff, Moynihan was offered the position of United States Ambassador to the United Nations (then held by career Foreign Service Officer Charles Woodruff Yost ) by Nixon on November 17, 1969; after initially accepting the president's offer, he decided to remain in Washington when

13095-419: The government. Some matriarchies have been described by historian Helen Diner as "a strong gynocracy" and "women monopolizing government" and she described matriarchal Amazons as "an extreme, feminist wing" of humanity and that North African women "ruled the country politically" before being overthrown by forms of patriarchy and, according to Adler, Diner "envision[ed] a dominance matriarchy". Gynocentrism

13230-652: The hands of males, and the current culture of the Mosuo has been heavily shaped by their minority status. In India, of communities recognized in the national Constitution as Scheduled Tribes, "some ... [are] matriarchal and matrilineal" "and thus have been known to be more egalitarian". According to interviewer Anuj Kumar, Manipur , India, "has a matriarchal society", but this may not be scholarly. In Kerala, Nairs, Thiyyas, Brahmins of Payyannoor village and Muslims of North Malabar and in Karnataka, Bunts and Billavas follow

13365-507: The highest good ... [with] the female principle ... activated in women and in Mother Earth ;... as its source" and that the Hopi had no need for an army as they did not have rivalries with neighbors. Women were central to institutions of clan and household and predominated "within the economic and social systems (in contrast to male predominance within the political and ceremonial systems)." The Clan Mother, for example,

13500-401: The information, Moynihan authored Secrecy: The American Experience where he discussed the impact government secrecy has had on the domestic politics of America for the past half century, and how myths and suspicion created an unnecessary partisan chasm. Moynihan married Elizabeth Brennan in 1955. The couple had three children, Tim, Maura, and John, and were married until his death. Moynihan

13635-582: The land since they were far more sensitive to the rhythms of the Mother Earth. We did not own the land but were custodians of it. Our women decided any and all issues involving territory, including where a community was to be built and how land was to be used....In our political system, we mandated full equality. Our leaders were selected by a caucus of women before the appointments were subject to popular review....Our traditional governments are composed of an equal number of men and women. The men are chiefs and

13770-410: The larger nation's annexation of a small country. The Indonesian invasion caused the deaths of 100,000–200,000 Timorese through violence, illness, and hunger. In his memoir, Moynihan wrote: The United States wished things to turn out as they did, and worked to bring this about. The Department of State desired that the United Nations prove utterly ineffective in whatever measures it undertook. This task

13905-705: The late Cold War , as exemplified by its support for the Contras in Nicaragua. Moynihan argued there was no active Soviet-backed conspiracy in Latin America, or anywhere. He suggested the Soviets were suffering from massive internal problems, such as rising ethnic nationalism and a collapsing economy. In a December 21, 1986, editorial in The New York Times , Moynihan predicted the replacement on

14040-583: The law of foreign taxes of Americans working abroad. Joseph Stack , who flew his airplane into a building housing IRS offices on February 18, 2010, posted a suicide note that, among many factors, mentioned the Section 1706 change to the Internal Revenue Code. As a key Environment and Public Works Committee member, Moynihan gave vital support and guidance to William K. Reilly , who served under President George H. W. Bush as Administrator of

14175-428: The male alternative to matriarchy. In their works, Johann Jakob Bachofen and Lewis Morgan used such terms and expressions as mother-right , female rule , gyneocracy , and female authority . All these terms meant the same: the rule by females (mother or wife). Although Bachofen and Lewis Morgan confined the "mother-right" inside households, it was the basis of female influence upon the whole society. The authors of

14310-421: The matrilineal system. Anthropologist Peggy Reeves Sanday has said that the Minangkabau society may be a matriarchy. According to William S. Turley, "the role of women in traditional Vietnamese culture was determined [partly] by ... indigenous customs bearing traces of matriarchy", affecting "different social classes" to "varying degrees". Peter C. Phan explains that "the ancient Vietnamese family system

14445-420: The possibilities of social system dynamics, or modeling social systems using computers with the aim of testing the possible effects of passing new public policies or laws. In his paper he recognized the difficulty of producing a reliable computer model system, but argued that an imperfect model was better than none and simply implementing new policy. Forrester argued that unsuccessful public policies aim to treat

14580-407: The premise of a mother-child dyad as the core of a human group where the grandmother was the central ancestor with her children and grandchildren clustered around her in an extended family. The term matricentric means 'having a mother as head of the family or household'. Matristic: Feminist scholars and archeologists such as Marija Gimbutas , Gerda Lerner , and Riane Eisler label their notion of

14715-566: The radicalism of the current anti-war and Black Power movements", decided to "call for a formal alliance between liberals and conservatives", and wrote that the next administration would have to be able to unite the nation again. Connecting with President-elect Richard Nixon in 1968, Moynihan joined the Executive Office of the President in January 1969 as Assistant to the President for Domestic Policy and executive secretary of

14850-726: The seas". Bangladesh The Khasi and the Garo people residing in the Sylhet and Mymensingh regions are two of the top matriarchal societies of Bangladesh . Possible matriarchies in Burma are, according to Jorgen Bisch, the Padaungs and, according to Andrew Marshall, the Kayaw . The Mosuo culture, which is in China near Tibet , is frequently described as matriarchal. The term matrilineal

14985-492: The state's large Jewish population. In an August 7, 1978 speech to the Senate, following the jailing of M. A. Farber , Moynihan stated the possibility of Congress having to become involved with securing press freedom and that the Senate should be aware of the issue's seriousness. Moynihan's strong advocacy for New York's interests in the Senate, buttressed by the Fisc reports and recalling his strong advocacy for US positions in

15120-448: The symptoms rather than the causes of social issues and that they also generally focus on efforts rather than on results. This occurs because there is either an incomplete understanding or a misunderstanding of the causes of an issue on the part of the policymakers, which often leads to ineffective or detrimental policies which aggravate the issues they were implemented to correct or cause other issues to arise. Another problem Forrester notes

15255-477: The term matrifocality. There is some debate concerning the terminological delineation between matrifocality and matriarchy . Matrifocal societies are those in which women, especially mothers, occupy a central position. Anthropologist R. T. Smith refers to matrifocality as the kinship structure of a social system whereby the mothers assume structural prominence. The term does not necessarily imply domination by women or mothers. In addition, some authors depart from

15390-514: The term: Göttner-Abendroth defines Modern Matriarchal Studies as the "investigation and presentation of non-patriarchal societies", effectively defining matriarchy as non-patriarchy. She has also defined matriarchy as characterized by the sharing of power equally between the two genders. According to Diane LeBow, "matriarchal societies are often described as ... egalitarian ...", although anthropologist Ruby Rohrlich has written of "the centrality of women in an egalitarian society." Matriarchy

15525-552: The two countries was at a low point following the Indo-Pakistani War of 1971 . Ambassador Moynihan was alarmed that two great democracies were cast as antagonists, and set out to fix things. He proposed that part of the burdensome debt be written off, part used to pay for U.S. embassy expenses in India, and the remaining converted into Indian rupees to fund an Indo-US cultural and educational exchange program that lasted for

15660-574: The two occasionally would relax in Moynihan's office after a long day to discuss their shared interest in urban renewal over a glass of port." Moynihan continued to be interested in foreign policy as a Senator, sitting on the Select Committee on Intelligence . His strongly anti-Soviet views became far more moderate when he emerged as a critic of the Reagan administration's hawkish tilt in

15795-471: The uses of government secrecy. Moynihan chaired the commission, which studied and made recommendations on the "culture of secrecy" that pervaded the United States government and its intelligence community for 80 years, beginning with the Espionage Act of 1917 , and made recommendations on the statutory regulation of classified information. The commission's findings and recommendations were presented to

15930-416: The view that Vietnam was originally a matriarchy ... [led to viewing] women's struggles for liberation from (Chinese) patriarchy as a metaphor for the entire nation's struggle for Vietnamese independence," and therefore, a "metaphor for the struggle of the matriarchy to resist being overthrown by the patriarchy." According to Keith Weller Taylor , "the matriarchal flavor of the time is ... attested by

16065-501: The women clan-mothers....As leaders, the women closely monitor the actions of the men and retain the right to veto any law they deem inappropriate....Our women not only hold the reins of political and economic power, they also have the right to determine all issues involving the taking of human life. Declarations of war had to be approved by the women, while treaties of peace were subject to their deliberations. The controversy surrounding prehistoric or "primal" matriarchy began in reaction to

16200-595: The word "matriarchy", we are conditioned to a number of responses: that matriarchy refers to the past and that matriarchies have never existed; that matriarchy is a hopeless fantasy of female domination, of mothers dominating children, of women being cruel to men. Conditioning us negatively to matriarchy is, of course, in the interests of patriarchs. We are made to feel that patriarchy is natural; we are less likely to question it, and less likely to direct our energies to ending it. The Matriarchal Studies school led by Göttner-Abendroth calls for an even more inclusive redefinition of

16335-399: The word [matriarchy], despite its literal meaning, include any concept of power, and they suggest that centuries of oppression have made it impossible for women to conceive of themselves with such power." Matriarchy has often been presented as negative, in contrast to patriarchy as natural and inevitable for society, and thus that matriarchy is hopeless. Love and Shanklin wrote: When we hear

16470-460: The world stage of Communist expansion with ethnic conflicts. He criticized the administration's "consuming obsession with the expansion of Communism – which is not in fact going on." In a September 8, 1990 letter to Erwin Griswold , Moynihan wrote: "I have one purpose left in life; or at least in the Senate. It is to try to sort out what would be involved in reconstituting the American government in

16605-634: The world's distribution of resources. WORLD3 was based on the Club of Rome 's Limits to Growth . Daniel Patrick Moynihan Daniel Patrick Moynihan (March 16, 1927 – March 26, 2003) was an American politician, diplomat and social scientist. A member of the Democratic Party , he represented New York in the United States Senate from 1977 until 2001 after serving as an adviser to President Richard Nixon , and as

16740-507: Was "something of an embarrassment to my own government, and fairly soon left before I was fired." In November 1976, Moynihan was elected to the U.S. Senate from the State of New York, defeating U.S. Representative Bella Abzug , former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark , New York City Council President Paul O'Dwyer and businessman Abraham Hirschfeld in the Democratic primary, and Conservative Party incumbent James L. Buckley in

16875-529: Was concurrently announced that Moynihan would be returning to Harvard (a stipulation of his leave from the university) at the end of 1970. Operational oversight of the Urban Affairs Council was given to Moynihan's nominal successor as Domestic Policy Assistant, former White House Counsel John Ehrlichman . This decision was instigated by White House Chief of Staff H. R. Haldeman , a close friend of Ehrlichman since college and his main patron in

17010-491: Was criticized after reportedly making offensive comments towards a woman of Jamaican descent at Vassar College in early 1990. During a question-and-answer session, Moynihan told Folami Grey, an official at the Dutchess County Youth Bureau, "If you don't like it in this country, why don't you pack your bags and go back where you came from?" This incident caused a protest in which 100 students took over

17145-448: Was defeated by Queens District Attorney Frank D. O'Connor . Throughout this transitional period, Moynihan maintained an academic affiliation as a fellow at Wesleyan University 's Center for Advanced Studies from 1964 to 1967. In 1966, he was appointed to the faculties of Harvard University 's Graduate School of Education and Graduate School of Public Administration as a full professor of education and urban politics. After commencing

17280-415: Was empowered to overturn land distribution by men if she felt it was unfair since there was no "countervailing ... strongly centralized, male-centered political structure". The Iroquois Confederacy or League, combining five to six Native American Haudenosaunee nations or tribes before the U.S. became a nation, operated by The Great Binding Law of Peace , a constitution by which women participated in

17415-514: Was given to me, and I carried it forward with no inconsiderable success. Later, he said he had defended a "shameless" Cold War policy toward East Timor. Moynihan's thinking began to change during his tenure at the UN. In his 1993 book on nationalism, Pandaemonium , he wrote that as time progressed, he began to view the Soviet Union in less ideological terms. He regarded it less as an expansionist, imperialist Marxist state, and more as

17550-611: Was most likely matriarchal, with women ruling over the clan or tribe" until the Vietnamese "adopt[ed] ... the patriarchal system introduced by the Chinese." That being said, even after adopting the patriarchal Chinese system, Vietnamese women, especially peasant women, still held a higher position than women in most patriarchal societies. According to Chiricosta, the legend of Âu Cơ is said to be evidence of "the presence of an original 'matriarchy' in North Vietnam and [it] led to

17685-474: Was never substantiated, Moynihan initially believed that Kissinger directed Ivor Richard, Baron Richard (then British Ambassador to the United Nations ) to publicly denounce his actions as " Wyatt Earp " diplomacy. Demoralized, Moynihan resigned from what he would subsequently characterize as an "abbreviated posting" in February 1976. In Pandaemonium , Moynihan expounded upon this decision, maintaining that he

17820-476: Was not necessarily associated with matriarchy in the sense of women's power over men. Many societies can be found that exhibit those qualities along with female subordination." According to Eller, Gimbutas had a large part in constructing a myth of historical matriarchy by examining Eastern European cultures that never really resembled the alleged universal matriarchy. She asserts that in "actually documented primitive societies" of recent (historical) times, paternity

17955-484: Was sharply critical of the bill and certain Democrats who crossed party lines to support it. Moynihan was a popular public speaker with a distinctly patrician style. He spoke with a slight stutter, which led him to draw out vowels. Linguist Geoffrey Nunberg compared his speaking style to that of William F. Buckley, Jr. In the post- Cold War era, the 103rd Congress enacted legislation directing an inquiry into

18090-599: Was the key moment of his political career. Perhaps the most controversial action of Moynihan's career was his response, as Ambassador to the UN, to the Indonesian invasion of East Timor in 1975. Gerald Ford considered Indonesia, then under a military dictatorship, a key ally against Communism , which was influential in East Timor. Moynihan ensured that the UN Security Council took no action against

18225-426: Was used in theology and history of religion as a designation for the study of particular motherly aspects of various female deities. The term was subsequently borrowed by other social sciences and humanities and its meaning was widened in order to describe and define particular female-dominated and female-centered aspects of cultural and social life. The male alternative for matriology is patriology, with patriarchy being

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