That's matrilineal, not matriarchy. Matriarchy means only or mostly women are in power and men are second-class citizens or suffer systematic discrimination or oppression. Tracing descent through your mother, but still putting a man on the throne every time, is matrilineal patriarchy. Matrilineal patriarchies occurred in many parts of the world, but they were still patriarchal with the men in charge. Matrilineality is merely a useful way to ensure the child is legitimate (your mother's identity is much less ambiguous than your father!)
Edited by ArcadesSabboth Oppression anywhere is a threat to democracy everywhere.
Does that mean that in America women are second-class citizens or suffer systematic discrimination or oppression?
Being Martilinear is the basic definition of a matriarchat. When claims are maid that there actually is "no unambiguous examples of matriarchy in our history or archaeology" it only means the Patriarchy Flip, as not only other Matriarchats are known, but still exist today. The exact point is, that these are not implementing the hirarchical powerstructurs that would be neccassery to make it a Patriarchy Flip.
Its rhetorically telling Matriarchats out of existence.
"Does that mean that in America women are second-class citizens or suffer systematic discrimination or oppression?"
I don't know which post you refer to, but it is a well known fact that women in America suffer systematic discrimination and oppression.
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"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman
From old memory, notes about the If I Pay Thee Not In Gold example (I'd rather not make an immediate edit; certainly not before I track down and reread my copy): Mercedes Lackey has co-author credit (and the writing does show parts that are more in her style), and it's stated in-universe that the region doesn't flip between patriarchy and matriarchy. The events that occasionally redefine the local system of "natural" magic do tend to end up empowering a different group each time, and tend to increase in the versatility and power of said endowment, but there's no clear pattern as to who or what (the previous cycle was children, I think). Also, pretty much any women in the empire viewed as beautiful is either dead, low-status, or a foreign slave (and/or nonhuman on that last) - looks get you nowhere here compared to combat experience and the muscle and scars to go with it. Although as the book's protagonist is a typical Lackey heroine (isolated from society and bullied), and she sets off on an adventure before that changes, the female characters in the story which get the most detail are in fact in the mildly pretty to clearly sexy range.
I moved the Plains of Passage example to Patriarchy Flip (and added some more details) because the Original Matriarchy is supposed to be no better or worse than patriarchy, and Attaroa's camp was definitely messed up. But it was a sort of Original form of society (males kept in a giant pen like livestock) so it isn't purely Patriarchy Flip. And it doesn't fit into Sexist Matriarchy either, because their society was messed up because of their insane leader, not because the women in general were incompetent. So I don't really know where it belongs.
Oppression anywhere is a threat to democracy everywhere.
The page begins "There are no unambiguous examples of matriarchy in our history or archaeology, which makes it a form of government which is wholly up to the author to invent," which for the most part is true but there was the Taino people of the island of Hati (and probaly others) where one could only inherit a ruling position through a female relative.
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