What Would a World Run by Women Actually Look Like?
On female leadership in the past, present and possible future
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With Kamala Harris emerging as the official Democratic candidate for the presidency of the United States — arguably one of the most powerful positions in the world — the fear of a world led by women is, once again, reignited.
This is evident in the Republican candidate’s campaign, which not-so-subtly suggests women aren’t capable of leading anything beyond a bake sale, and the heightened scrutiny of Harris’s appearance, tone, and demeanour — much of which, unsurprisingly, plays into sexist and racist tropes. But also, in a broader panic about the supposed ‘feminisation’ of our world.
The claim that everything is becoming ‘feminised’ — the West, men, education, the workplace, the home, etc. — has become such a popular cry among certain segments of society you’d think we’re mere years away from exiling men who leave the toilet seat up to outer space and renaming the planet to ‘Estrogenia.’ But the reality is far different. Women still occupy just a fraction of legislative seats globally, and only 26 of the 193 UN member countries are currently led by women (in most cases, these leaders are also the first female heads of state or government their countries have ever had.)
Of course, for those who believe women are inherently unsuited to such roles or anything else outside the domestic sphere, even one woman in a position of authority is one too many. Still, setting aside all the biases and prejudices against women, which, sadly, continue to run deep in our world, how would one actually look like if women held more power?
What if, hypothetically, the whole world were ruled entirely by women?
And why does the idea seem so frightening to some?
Growing up, the idea of a female-led world was quite foreign to me. After all, practically everywhere I looked — politics, media, church — it was men who called the shots. The only woman in a position of authority I can recall from childhood is my primary school principal. And that’s it.
But I hadn’t really given much thought to the matter until one Sunday when I happened to be paying attention during a sermon. It was delivered by a visiting high-ranking Catholic cleric, who seized the moment to lecture women about their supposed God-ordained role in society, punctuating his speech with intermittent fist-pounding.
The image of a man in power, surrounded by a dozen other men, standing on a raised platform and looking down at women while telling them how to serve men is permanently etched in my mind, filed under the category, ‘I can’t believe this is real.’
Perhaps this might not seem like a big deal to anyone who grew up staunchly Catholic. But if you reverse the situation and imagine a woman standing on that platform, surrounded solely by other women, aggressively lecturing men on how to behave, it quickly becomes comical, doesn’t it? The absurdity and injustice of a male-dominated world is often most striking when the roles are completely flipped. That’s also how we frequently depict a female-led world today.
Greta Gerwig’s Barbie movie is one recent example of a script-flipping take on the patriarchy, though a lighthearted one. The 2018 French movie Je ne suis pas un homme facile (I Am Not an Easy Man), written and directed by Éléonore Pourriat, and Naomi Alderman’s brilliant novel The Power delve much deeper, offering a more realistic reflection of patriarchal society. In Pourriat’s film, it’s men who are the frequent targets of harassment and sexual assault and who are expected to just stay home and remain voiceless. In The Power, women emboldened by the newly found power quickly abuse it to subjugate men, rendering them powerless, impotent and miserable. One character even starts a female-centric religious order, where both God and the prophet are women.
The notion that a world run by women would simply be the inverse of our current patriarchal system is also often pushed by those most fearful of a ‘feminised’ reality. Think of the popular ‘this is the future liberals want’ memes, for example.
But is this really how life would look for men in a matriarchal world?
What actually happens when women hold power?
The few great female rulers we learn about in school — say, Cleopatra, Catherine the Great or Queen Victoria — ruled within largely male-dominated societies. In other words, though they wielded power, they still had to play by rules created by and for men — or face consequences if they didn’t. (This remains true today, but we’ll get to that later.)
If we look further back, prehistory offers some examples, too, including those of female leaders and societies run by women and men together or by women alone. One notable instance of the latter comes from late Iberian prehistory. According to a recent study published in Scientific Reports, not only was the highest-ranking individual of that era and the entire region a woman — once dubbed ‘Ivory Man’, now known as the ‘Ivory Lady’ — but most of the top-ranked individuals were all women, too. Unfortunately, we don’t know much about life for people living there.
Egalitarian prehistoric societies, like those at Çatalhöyük in modern-day Turkey as well as in other parts of the Middle East and Europe, give us a few more clues, though. These communities were marked by lower levels of violence and economic exploitation compared to male-dominated ones. Gender also had little impact on people’s roles, with both men and women leading similar lives in terms of diet, work, and lifestyle.
But while looking to the distant past for clues is challenging, we can also turn to the present.
Recent research, building on decades-old studies in anthropology, suggests that at least 160 communities worldwide — primarily in Asia, Africa, and the Americas — are still traditionally organised into female-dominated structures. Most of these groups are matrilineal (tracing descent through the female line, with property often inherited the same way), matrilocal (where women remain near their families after marriage), and matricentric or matrifocal (with women heading the household).
Yet, these communities are hardly mirror images of a patriarchy; female-dominated societies are frequently a lot more complex than just women having absolute authority over men and children.
In her 2002 book Women at the Center: Life in a Modern Matriarchy, anthropologist Peggy Reeves Sanday recounts her years living among the Minangkabau people of West Sumatra, Indonesia — the world’s largest and most stable matrilineal society, with over five million members.
According to Minangkabau legends, their matrilineal ‘adat’ (customary practice) dates back to the time of Alexander the Great. And despite undergoing transformations following their conversion to Islam in the 16th century and over two centuries of European colonial rule, the Minangkabau have preserved most of their traditional practices and religion — which is female oriented, too — and continue to proudly refer to their society as a ‘matriarchaat,’ a term first used by Dutch colonial officials in the 19th century.
As is the case in other matrilineal societies, Minangkabau land and property are passed down through the maternal line, and when a couple marries, the husband moves in with his wife’s family. However, and as Sanday highlights in her book, it’s a mistake to view such societies through a patriarchal lens and assume men there must be oppressed or sidelined. In fact, while Minangkabau women oversee economic decisions — ‘holding the keys to the rice house’ — and lead in education, culture and ceremony, men play pivotal roles in religion and governance, though within a framework shaped by women. All decisions are also made by consensus and with the common good in mind. ‘Neither sex rules, it was explained to me, because males and females complement one another,’ she points out.
Most remarkably, Sanday notes that domestic violence and rape, locally viewed as abhorrent, are nearly absent in this society.
Another notable example of a long-standing female-led community — some say it’s 2,000 years old — is the Mosou, who live in the foothills of the eastern Himalayas in China. In Mosuo society, property is also passed down the female line, and it’s women who head households and run businesses. But they are perhaps best known for their lack of marriages and, instead, a practice of ‘walking marriages,’ in which partners live separately, and men are only invited to a woman’s home for occasional ‘sweet nights.’ As one Mosuo woman named Cha Cuo told a documentary filmmaker, ‘Why would you want the marriage license to handcuff yourself?’
Many other societies continue to uphold matriarchal traditions, too, such as the Haudenosaunee in North America, the Bribri in Costa Rica, and the Khasis in India. Among the Khasis, it’s the youngest daughter — known as the ‘khadhuh’ — who inherits her mother’s wealth and manages the household, often offering shelter to orphaned or unmarried male relatives. Similar matrilineal communities also exist in Africa’s ‘matrilineal belt,’ which dates back over 5,000 years.
Though I haven’t (yet) visited these communities, I once travelled to villages in Morocco’s High Atlas Mountains, where it’s women who run local restaurants and argan oil cooperatives. I visited one such place, and a woman there explained, ‘There’s no one in charge — all of the women share the profits and contribute to the work.’
Perhaps it was the relief of stepping out of a poorly ventilated bus or the abundance of adorable, small cats (North African felines are smaller than their European counterparts), but the place felt idyllic. It also stood in stark contrast to other villages I visited in the region, which were far more impoverished and run down and where women could scarcely even be seen in public.
Although the sample of female leaders and countries with significant female representation at the top remains small, we already have some insights into what the mix of women and power can result in.
Unsurprisingly, several studies suggest that women’s legislative representation increases the amount of peaceful and climate-friendly policies. Women in decision-making roles also tend to perform better on environmental and sustainable outcomes and are more cooperative, socially-oriented, altruistic, and focused on long-term goals.
It’s perhaps no coincidence that Finland, the happiest country in the world for the seventh year in a row, has near gender parity in government and, until last year, was governed by a coalition of five political parties — all led by women, with Prime Minister Sanna Marin at the helm.
However, some studies find that due to long-standing stereotypes of female leaders as ‘weak’ and ‘ill-suited’ for the job, they sometimes tend to compensate for this perceived weakness by acting more aggressively.
That’s the thing we can’t forget about. Women in powerful leadership roles, but on a still largely male-dominated planet, have to navigate a maze of double-binds and act ‘masculine’ enough to be seen as competent but also not ‘too masculine’ to be unlikeable (this is the ‘warmth-competence tradeoff’). After all, our idea of leadership is still rooted in traits historically associated with men: dominance, aggression, and assertiveness.
And so, if all male heads of state were replaced by women, while keeping cultural norms the same, I wouldn’t expect radical changes. Perhaps this world run by women would eventually start to resemble the dystopian nightmare some imagine: men being treated by women the way men have treated them for centuries. If whoever is in charge rules the others with an iron fist and not with compassion, empathy, and cooperativeness (considered ‘feminine’ traits) in mind, then the results will always be bleak.
But this is why it’s valuable to look at past and present communities that challenge mainstream norms, particularly those where patriarchy — and, by extension, rigid hierarchical structures and gender norms — have not taken root. And then imagine a world where it truly doesn’t matter ‘who’s on top’ because collective welfare and consensus matter more. A world where we all strive to care for each other, our communities, and our planet, and where a good life is a given — not a rare stroke of luck akin to winning the lottery.
It’s not exactly a flipped society, but a bettered one.
Could women, who are still socially conditioned to think and behave more communally, get us there quicker if they started running the show?
If they refuse to play by the old rules, I believe so, yes.
The way we’ve organised ourselves for the past few thousand years, with a few men on top of everyone else, has been sadly made to seem inevitable, omnipresent, natural, or even biological. But as Angela Saini writes,
The most dangerous part of any oppression is that it can make people believe that there are no alternatives.
Clearly, there have always been alternatives. And it’s time we looked beyond the social structures of today, beyond the obsession with dominance-based hierarchies and violence and the rat race that keeps so many of us stuck in self-defeating cycles and imagined something different and better.
It doesn’t have to be a Brave New World run solely by women.
But women should get their fair shot at running it.
And when they do, perhaps we’ll see societal transformations beyond anything we can currently imagine.
While I’m a staunch feminist, I do think the question needs to change from “who runs the world” to “how can we create a decentralised, localised, close-to-nature, loving communities where power and wealth are not massively concentrated?”
Anarchy doesn’t mean there are no rules; it means there are no rulers. You can still have loving agreements reached in a democratic way between more close knit community members.
I believe female values are much healthier for society as a whole. I wish the world was run by women. I have a strong hunch we wouldn’t be in this mess.