matriarchate

[mey-tree-ahr-kit, -keyt]

noun

a matriarchal system or community.
a social order formerly believed to have preceded patriarchal tribal society in the early period of human communal life, embodying rule by the mothers, or by all adult women.

Origin of matriarchate

First recorded in 1880–85; matriarch + -ate³

Dictionary.com Unabridged Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2018

Examples from the Web for matriarchate

Historical Examples of matriarchate

The term "matriarchate" encouraged this fallacy and has gone out of use.
Folkways
William Graham Sumner
Even in modern Germany remnants of the matriarchate survive.
Woman and Socialism
August Bebel
The matriarchate disappeared and the patriarchate took its place.
Woman and Socialism
August Bebel
I said the peoples with whom we are now being brought as a nation into vital relationship may be still in the matriarchate.
The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV
Various
Let no one imagine that the so-called "matriarchate" of early ages was an ideal condition of society.
The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV
Various

British Dictionary definitions for matriarchate

matriarchate

noun

rare a family or people under female domination or government

Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012