"Many, perhaps even most, societies were matrifocal in the remote past.
(2) The reason that this has ceased might be related to the level of interaction between groups of humans. As long as people were sufficiently thinly spread so that there were few interactions between neighbouring groups, then these groups could remain matrifocal. The situation would have been similar to the matrifocal societies found among most primate groups. But as the pressure of population built up, groups began to interact more extensively with each other and, inevitably, power relations developed, with one group subjugating another.
We may characterise the patriarchal society as giving the greatest value to power, authority, control, victory, ownership, law, courage, strength. The main interactions are power struggles and competition. The ends justify the means. Results are expressed in terms of victory or defeat. There are only points for the winners in such a society, none for the also-rans. It is epitomised by tradition, institutions, civilisation, and control over the natural world. There is a tendency towards centralisation of authority because that is one way of achieving greater and greater power.
In the matrifocal society, by contrast, the highest values are nurturing, life-giving, compassion, sensitivity, spontaneity, creativity, working with nature and giving support to others. The principle interactions are mutual and co-operative. The means are as important as the ends. Victory and success and judged by the degree to which the condition of all is bettered. It is epitomised by the natural world. The mutuality and consultative decision-making that it favours best occurs in small autonomous communities.
What then does the Bahá'í principle of the equality of men and women mean in connection with this? Many people have assumed that it means that women should be given equal power with men in our society—the concept of "empowerment" has become a catch-phrase. But 'Abdu'l-Bahá has called for a feminisation of society itself—for a society in which power is less important.
The world in the past has been ruled by force, and man has dominated woman by reason of his more forceful and aggressive qualities both of body and mind. But the balance is already shifting—force is losing its weight and mental alertness, intuition and the spiritual qualities of love and service, in which woman is strong, are gaining ascendancy. Hence the new age will be an age less masculine, and more permeated with the feminine ideals—or, to speak more exactly, will be an age in which the masculine and feminine elements in civilisation will be more evenly balanced.
(3)
. . . probably the main reason for the decline in the matrifocal society was the increasing pressure of population that led to an increasing ability of one group to have power over others. Greater and greater degrees of centralised power characterises the patriarchal society. Thus, in order to achieve a more feminine society, we must have a greater degree of decentralisation than exists in most of our societies. The Bahá'í administrative order with its insistence on the rights of the local assembly to jurisdiction over its local area; the statements of Shoghi Effendi warning against "the evils of excessive centralization;"
(11) the decision of the Universal House of Justice to devolve decisions about the formulation of global plans to a national level; the January 2nd, 1986, letter of the Universal House of Justice that it was this devolution of responsibility that marked the progress of the Bahá'í Faith and the dawn of a new epoch—all these serve to indicate the importance of decentralisation as a feature of the Bahá'í administrative order."
