A Mosuo woman from China’s
Yunnan province (Picture: Alamy)
5 March 2013
THE MOSUO, CHINA
Deep in south-west China lies Lugu
Lake, a place known as the Kingdom
of Women. Here you’ll find the
40,000-strong Mosuo, one of the world’s last matrilineal societies. As befits a
culture with no word for ‘father’ or ‘husband’, Mosuo women do not marry.
Instead, they take as many lovers as they wish, cherry-picking them from within
the tribe and inviting them for secret evening trysts (usually after the men
have spent all day slaughtering pigs, while females sort out household
finances). Property is handed down through the female line and there’s no
stigma in not knowing who a child’s father is. Such matriarchal utopia
does have drawbacks – curious visitors have descended upon the once-isolated
region under the mistaken suggestion Mosuo women offer free sex. Sadly, some of
the previously peaceful villages have been overrun with hotels, casinos,
karaoke and even a red-light district.
THE AKA, CENTRAL AFRICAN
REPUBLIC AND DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF CONGO
The menfolk of the Aka people in Africa’s Congo Basin have been described as
the ‘best dads in the world’ with the paternally minded pygmies playing with
their babies at least five times as often as men from other societies. While
women hunt, the men cook. Cots are unheard of (couples never leave babies lying
unattended) and if one Aka parent smacks an infant, the other views it as
grounds for divorce. Most staggering of all, Aka fathers offer their nipples as
pacifiers to their babies when mum isn’t around. Somebody send a note to
Fathers 4 Justice now…
ICELAND
For the past four years, Iceland has
topped the World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap Index Britain
is 18th), thanks to passing female-friendly laws, such as the 2010 decision to
outlaw strip clubs. ‘I guess men will have to get used to the idea that women
are not for sale,’ said prime minister Johanna Sigurdardottir (pictured), the
world’s first openly lesbian head of state, who presides over a parliament
where women hold 40 per cent of seats. The campaign for women’s rights has long
thrived in Iceland
– on October 24, 1975, a date labelled ‘women’s day off’, 90 per cent of the
country’s females refused to work, cook or look after children. The feminist
agenda was nudged even further when the government recently announced it was
drafting plans to ban pornography both in print and online.
ALAPINE, ALABAMA
Across America, there are around 100 off-the-grid female-only colonies where
anybody saddled with a Y chromosome is forbidden. Welcome to America’s
Womyn’s Lands. These largely lesbian communities started life in the 1970s when
a cluster of revolutionary women founded a camp on the beach in St
Augustine, Florida. Today, one
of the largest Womyn’s Lands is found in rural Alabama,
in a camp called Alapine Village.
Here 13 women (most aged between 50 and 80) co-exist, working the land by day
and meeting for ‘community full moon circles’ (activities: singing and reading
poems) by night – all largely unnoticed by their Bible Belt neighbours.
www.alapine.org
SWORN VIRGINS, ALBANIA
The remote mountain villages of northern Albania
have a bizarre way of appointing a head of household when there is no male
heir: one daughter (usually a teenager) takes a vow of chastity before spending
the rest of her life living as a man. These women cut their curly tresses, wear
baggy men’s clothes and develop baritone timbres before taking on jobs as
shepherds or truck drivers. The system of sworn virgins has endured for 200
years and although they are far from being emancipated (some girls are forced
into the role), they escape the subordination (arranged marriages, being unable
to own property) that afflicts many other Albanian women. Today, sworn virgins
seem to be petering out, with most over 60 years old.
MEGHALAYA,
INDIA
According to the Guinness Book of Records, the hilly Indian state of Meghalaya
is the rainiest place on Earth. And in its tribal populations, it also boasts
one of the world’s few surviving matrilineal systems – where women, rather than
men, own land and property. Tradition dictates that the youngest daughter in
the family inherits all the property as well as acting as caretaker of aged
parents and unmarried siblings. As for the Meghalaya menfolk, a suffragette
movement has sprung up, with men’s right groups claiming matrilineal culture is
breeding generations of gents who fall short of their potential, subsequently
slipping into alcoholism and drug abuse.