Maybe the Problem Was Never Men. It Was Power.

Eda Dolunay

1 day ago

8 min read

I grew up in a world that was, in almost every visible way, run by men. But inside the home, it was always the women who ran everything. They decided where everyone would sit at the dinner table, what we would eat that night, what the children would wear and what was appropriate for everyone else to wear, too.

My grandmother was a very modern, cool and dominant woman. She was the kind of woman whose word was law. Once she made a decision, nobody really questioned it. She had a say in everything: how family money was spent, who would inherit what, how property was divided, what happened inside the house, which school each grandchild would attend, who would come over during the holidays and when, and even who was allowed to be angry with whom.

She also had opinions about what we wore, who we married, what we studied and what kind of lives we should build for ourselves. Sometimes she didn't even have to say anything. Everyone already knew what she would think, and that was usually enough.

The men might have been the ones sitting at the head of the table. But everyone knew who actually ran the house.

For a long time, I thought this was what female power looked like.

But I think I was confusing power with freedom. The women around me had power. They made decisions, set rules, controlled households and were often the final word on what everyone else should do. But none of that necessarily meant they were free. Their power existed within a system they had not created and often depended on their ability to enforce its rules on the women who came after them.

Then I started wondering whether power is still liberation when the first thing it teaches you to do is police another woman.

Maybe it is no coincidence that we are suddenly talking about matriarchy again. In 2026, “a matriarchy would never” has become its own kind of internet shorthand, turning an old feminist idea into a new cultural fantasy: what if women were finally in charge?

But that question is precisely what interests me. I grew up inside a version of that fantasy. In my family, women were already in charge. It did not feel like liberation.

So what exactly do we mean when we talk about matriarchy?

The word is usually imagined as the opposite of patriarchy: if men have historically held power, then perhaps a matriarchal world would simply put women in their place. But matriarchy is not simply patriarchy with women at the top. It describes social systems in which women, particularly mothers and older women, hold significant authority over family life, inheritance, social organisation or decision-making.

And this is where the idea gets interesting. Because women have never been strangers to power. They have simply inherited a very particular kind of it.

None of the men in my family really needed to be individuals. They didn't have to be particularly independent or even make their own decisions. In many ways, their main responsibility was simply to earn enough money to live up to what their mothers expected of them. The women ran the household, but the men still occupied the position that made the whole structure possible. A man's job was to provide, carry the family name and eventually become the person whose permission mattered.

The same logic extended into marriage. A man's wife was expected to fit into the family, not necessarily to create a life of her own outside it. She was not simply marrying a man; she was entering a system that already had rules, expectations and women who had spent years learning how to enforce them.

For generations, a woman's power was tied to where she stood within that family hierarchy. Before marriage, her reputation and sexuality could determine how much respect she was given. In some traditional communities, a bride's virginity was treated as a matter of family honour, with the red ribbon tied around her waist sometimes carrying that symbolism. Marriage could then change a woman's position almost overnight. She might finally gain authority within her husband's family, perhaps even gaining a kind of power she had never experienced in her father's home.

But power did not necessarily mean freedom.

If anything, marriage could mean exchanging one form of authority for another. A woman might leave her father's household only to find that her husband had become the person expected to watch over her. And then, if she had a son, her position could change again. She was no longer simply a wife or daughter-in-law; she was the mother of a son, and that could give her a new kind of authority within the family.

I grew up seeing this logic repeated in stories, films and family narratives. Women who did not have sons were often portrayed as somehow less fortunate, less secure or even responsible for their own position. The message was subtle but unmistakable: a woman's status could change depending on the men she belonged to, first her father, then her husband and eventually her son.

Deniz Kandiyoti gave this arrangement a name in 1988: the “patriarchal bargain”.

In the classical patriarchal household, a woman begins at the bottom of the hierarchy as a daughter-in-law and waits. She obeys, endures, performs, raises children, grows older. Eventually, if she survives the system long enough, she can move upward within it.

The bargain is not that she escapes the hierarchy. It is that one day, she gets to occupy a better position within it.

This is what makes the arrangement so difficult to see as a form of oppression. A woman can have enormous authority inside her home while having very little power to change the structure that gives her that authority. A mother may decide what happens in the household. A mother-in-law may determine the rules a young wife is expected to follow. A grandmother may become the final authority on everyone else's choices.

From the outside, this can look almost matriarchal. But look closer and something else is happening.

The woman at the top has not necessarily dismantled the hierarchy. She has climbed it. Her authority may depend on age, motherhood, marriage, having a son or simply having successfully performed the roles that the patriarchal system rewards. And because her power is conditional on those roles, preserving the system can become the very thing that preserves her power.

This is where the fantasy of matriarchy begins to fall apart. The Western fantasy of matriarchy often rests on a simple assumption: if women were the ones in charge, power itself would become softer. More caring, more communal, less hierarchical. But in some traditional communities, women can hold enormous authority inside the home without that authority making the household any less hierarchical.

Women can be the ones deciding what happens at home, who does what, what is acceptable and what is not. They can know exactly when a daughter should be home, what she should wear, when she should marry, when she should have children and what kind of life she should be building. They can enforce these rules, report them to other family members and make sure they are passed down.

The result is not necessarily greater freedom or solidarity between women. Sometimes, it is simply another form of control.

The phrase “mother knows best” captures this perfectly. On the surface, it sounds like an affirmation of female wisdom and authority. But follow the logic a little further and it becomes something else: mother knows, mother decides, mother monitors, the younger woman is corrected, the younger woman learns, and eventually she becomes the woman doing the same thing to someone younger than her.

What gets passed from one generation of women to the next is therefore not only care. It is also a set of rules about how a woman should behave, what she should want, when she should marry, how she should dress, how she should mother and how much freedom she is allowed to have.

This is what makes female authority within the home so complicated. Women can be the ones running the household without being the ones who designed the hierarchy they are running. The women who benefit from that hierarchy may become its most effective guardians, not because they are inherently controlling, but because their own position within the family was built by learning how to navigate and enforce the same rules.

From the outside, it can look almost like matriarchy. But look closer and it is something else: patriarchy sustained by women who have finally been allowed to become its gatekeepers.

The power these women hold is real. But it is borrowed. A mother-in-law's authority does not necessarily come from being a woman. It comes from having survived the system long enough, from growing older within it, from becoming the mother of a son and from reaching a position that the hierarchy recognises as legitimate. Her power is not necessarily a reward for womanhood. It is a reward for successfully navigating patriarchy.

This is the paradox of the patriarchal bargain. The woman who once had the least authority can eventually gain enormous influence, but only by waiting her turn. She obeys as a daughter-in-law, performs the roles expected of her, raises children, grows older and eventually becomes the person whose rules another young woman is expected to follow.

And this is why the system can be so difficult to break. If the hierarchy disappears, she does not simply lose her power. She also loses the reward she spent years waiting for. The years of obedience, sacrifice and endurance suddenly have nowhere to go.

“I suffered through it, so you will too” can sound cruel from the outside. But inside the system, it can feel less like cruelty than accounting.

I paid my price. Now it is your turn.

There is another problem with calling this matriarchy: much of this female authority is influence rather than structural power. A woman may run the household, but when a decision really matters, it can still need to pass through a man. “Ask your father.” “My husband won't allow it.” The women may decide what happens inside the home, but inheritance, property, surnames, legal authority and formal ownership can remain organised around the male line.

That is not matriarchy. It is a hierarchy in which an older woman may occupy a powerful position without ever becoming the source of the power itself. The household may be governed by women while the larger structure remains patriarchal.

And perhaps the most revealing part is what this system offers the younger woman. Not freedom, exactly. A promise to wait.

Wait until you marry. Wait until you have children. Wait until you have a son. Wait until you are old enough, established enough, respected enough. Then, perhaps, you will have a say too.

But when her turn finally comes, what has she inherited?

Often, the right to exercise authority over another young woman who is now where she once was.

It is not really a line of solidarity. It is a chain of succession.

This is also where the Western fantasy of matriarchy becomes complicated. The idea that women would naturally create a softer, more caring, less hierarchical society relies on a comforting form of essentialism: that women are inherently more nurturing, more collaborative or simply better suited to power because they are women.

But women are not immune to hierarchy. Give someone power inside a hierarchy, and they may protect the structure that gave it to them. Not because women are naturally controlling. Because power teaches people to protect their position. Maybe that is the part of the matriarchy fantasy we get wrong. The problem is not simply who is sitting at the top. It is the system that decides who gets to climb there, how long they have to wait and what they have to become to earn the right.

The real question is not whether women can rule differently. It is whether power changes when the people holding it change, or only when the system that distributes it does. Because the greatest form of female power would not be finally getting to do to another woman what was once done to you.

It would be making sure she never has to earn her freedom by waiting her turn. Some identifying details have been changed. This essay is about a structure, not about any one woman.