How could a matriarchy develop while men are still the heads of war/military? [closed]

Question

I'm trying to develop a matriarchal Empire for a story, but the main issue I'm having is that I don't want the women to all be warriors or magically physically stronger etc.

The setting is essentially medieval-esque Europe and Asia, though there are differences that aren't really relevant to this question. The people of this empire are called Fayli. The Fayli have a sex ratio difference of 3:1 in favor of women, so it's quite common for groups of women to all have one husband, though rich nobles often go the opposite way and have several husbands for one woman as a way of flaunting their wealth.

By matriarchy I mean that I want the women to be the diplomats/politicians, the merchants, the crafters, the architects, the religious heads, the scientists, artists/musicians and Queens/Empress...but the main thing is: I don't want them to be physically stronger or better fighters than men. The Fayli empire's armies are still made up of men, the merchant women's bodyguards are men, the miners and field workers and laborers are still men, it's just that those men always answer to women in higher positions or to their wives. As there is such a male/female ratio disparity, very often there are women who never have children, and instead stay with their sisters or move with their brothers to their new home to take care of the children.

Essentially, it'd be:

• Anything that needs strength or manual labor: men.
• Everything else: women.

Men join the woman's household and take their name when they marry, before that they live with their mothers and their extended family. Divorce is generally not a thing for men or women unless no children come of the union, because of religious reasons. Woman often live with their sisters and mother/grandmother and their husbands, sometimes sharing a husband because there's far more woman than men. Children grow up communally in large extended families and it's not shameful to bring children to workplaces.

However...why would it end up this way without women having military power? If you look at how societies historically thrived/gained power, generally it came down to the military, aka, warriors.

So I've seen a lot of posts/articles about matriarchal societies developing and how for them to survive/thrive outside of marginal areas (like where near-matriarchies are found today) that women would need some way of out-fighting the men, as that's where the majority of power historically has come from. However, I personally don't think this would solve the real issue when it comes to matriarchies. The real issue is not biological affinity for fighting, but rather the fact that the population of a society is determined largely by how many women of child bearing age it has.

For example: Two tribes have 50 women and 50 men, one is patriarchal and one is matriarchal. Both of these tribes are vying for the same resources and end up going to war. Tribe patriarchy loses 40 men, tribe matriarchy loses 20 women. Both go home. The next year, tribe patriarchy could feasibly have 50 babies, while tribe matriarchy could only have 30. And, if during that time when tribe matriarchy is all pregnant tribe patriarchy were to attack...then they'd have no way to defend themselves unless the men were to protect them.

It just seems more feasible, from an evolution standpoint, for woman not to be the fighters, so as to preserve their ability to procreate. But if they don't have some sort of magic that will allow them to win a battle against other neighboring patriarchal societies, then is a matriarchy impossible? Our own history would suggest so, as most anthropologists say there's no evidence of an unambiguously matriarchal society, and especially not one that's thrived enough to become an empire.

This is what I'm really struggling with, because I just feel that it's unrealistic for women to make up the whole army of a matriarchy, even with magic fighting powers, but for men to still be in charge of the military it seems unrealistic they'd be fine being at the 'bottom of the totem pole' so to speak. I think I'm just not knowledgeable enough about why patriarchy's developed over matriarchy's in the first place, which is why I posted here.

TLDR: What would make a TRUE matriarchy possible outside of 'magic fighting powers for women'?

Answer 1

The answer is in the sex ratio

If as you say the that ratio is three to one in favor of women then in a medieval setting (technologically as well as culturally) there simply won't be enough males available to fill all the roles that would otherwise be filled by men.

Agriculture during this period was heavily labor intensive (as was herding, fishing and mining etc.) Add in the need for some kind of permanent or semi permanent military and law enforcement etc. and there would be a chronic shortage of 'manpower'. Over time as large cities and towns sprang up, women would naturally take over and occupy all sorts of 'indoor' trades and crafts, like weaving, pottery and metal work etc. even if some were male dominated originally. The need for labor would demand it.

Same for administrative functions, clerks and the law and such. Pretty soon 'custom' would become law. Men would bear arms, be responsible for herding/animal husbandry, mining and maritime trades and perhaps a few specialized 'heavy' trades like stone masonry. They might also be employed regularly as caravan/merchant/couriers delivering goods and messages between towns and cities and nations.

This last might be important if neighboring powers have a more even sex balance and the typically chauvinist attitudes towards women prevalent in that period. The Fayli might find it politically useful for foreigners to see 'male faces' conducting business on behalf of their wives when visiting another country even if they are literally only following orders issued from home. Formal diplomatic missions to foreign courts would of course still be headed by women.

The point is that in a matriarchal culture the men don't necessarily have to be or even feel like they are at 'bottom of the heap'. They are not second class citizens. Think of it like a caste system only one where class & status is divided not vertically but horizontally. How well you do at your particular trade decrees how far you rise and not so much the nature of that trade.

Men have certain trades specifically reserved for them and have the same legal rights as women including the right to a share in the profits of whatever businesses their families conduct.

Women run the government, banking and finances of the country as well as most trades and crafts and conduct all business within their local communities. Men join the army, sail the ships, own land/herd and travel on behalf of their families, business and government, getting paid accordingly. Importantly by tradition their input on matters relating to their areas of expertise is sought and listened to by the ruling class.

Edit: If the Fayli are the only culture on the continent with the skewed sex ratio, then over time intermarriage with other races might well see that ratio start to shift back towards the normal 1:1. If on the other hand all other cultures have the same issue then the need for men to travel and act as the 'face' of the Fayli for mundane business matters would not be an issue.

Edit 2: Upon reflection it might be simpler if women own all the land and by law a man who herds cattle, sheep, horses etc. or otherwise rents access to land shares profits with the female owner. The same rule would apply to any other business activity. Operate a mine, the land owner gets a share. Women can lend money for movable assets (like boats) but the men operating it 'own' it. That kind of thing. Men on the other hand can own 'moveable assets' assets, livestock, boats, wagons, equipment etc. and can lend money for land assets.

Answer 2

The men are not strategists.

They are big and strong and they are attentive. But they are not strategic. I am thinking of my dog - a good dog and smart enough as dogs go. But when something is up she checks what I am doing first before she takes action. She wants direction. That is why dogs have humans. Dogs get it done fine but humans are so clever.

That is how most of the men are in your society. They can put one foot in front of the other, and most do very well in the heat of the moment. They are just not big on figuring things out, and not big at all on long term planning. They look to the ladies for these things. That is why ladies are the leaders, and old ladies in particular.

Men make war because males are dispensible, as you point out in the OP. Your armies of men in the field might bring one or two women with, there as strategists. When a group is all men, they are really careful and take their time making decisions. You can have a male character who can figure things out like a woman and his male companions are surprised and pleased, and sometimes tease him because of that.

Answer 3

Extrapolate from the Spartans https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women_in_ancient_Sparta

The women had right of inheritance, and the society was war-like; as the men died in battles the wealth, and thus the power, slowly accumulates to the women.

Answer 4

Rulership is unmanly

Stay safe in a luxurious room taking decisions?! That is a woman's job! Manliness in this culture is deeply associated with men's superior physical strength and because of that taking any kind of work that does not involve manual labor is extremely stigmatized. Even among the military, non-combat roles tend to be filled with women as hardly any man would endure such humiliation. And on top of that...

The warrior's families are in charge

The rulers might not be men, but those gals surely have men to fight their wars. Their husbands are usually officers or particularly skilled warriors, while their sons form a warrior nobility, maintaining their families power, while skipping the utter humiliation of deciding trade policies and discussion immigration. This means the warrior nobility job is just fighting and making babies with probably many wives, a great deal overall.

Side note 1: a skewed gender rate is unsustainable, if every men can easily find mates while women struggle, than there is an advantage to having more sons, creating a selective pressure.

Side note 2: if is a medieval setting, men would still be the providers of most families. Farming was the base of the economy and it is a back-breaker occupation

EDIT

Side note 1 describe a biological principle. If the gender rate is 3:1 and the population is stable, the males on average have 4 offsprings while the average female only have 1,333. This mean that mutations that skew the rate in favor of more males increase biological fitness.

This is the reason why even in mammals where only a handfull of males are able to reproduce, the sex rate tends to 1:1, despite most males producing no offspring the few bull produce enough offspring so that males have about as much offspring as females on average, thus having a male offspring or a female one is equally fiting.

Answer 5

Females control fertility.

For example: Let females consciously control whether or not they conceive, AND consciously emit a substance (undetectable by the male) during intercourse that temporarily renders male impotent and sterile for, say, a month or so.

• Females control their own fertility
• Females exercise limited control their partners' fertility

Successful males, rather than pursuing harems, abusive control, rape, and other (awful) power-based strategies must persuade a small number of potential partners that they are worthwhile mates. If they become too aggressive or controlling, they suffer a month of lost opportunity.

Answer 6

It's Been Done With the Iroquois

The Iroquois Confederacy was a matrilineal society (inheritance was passed down from the mother's side of the family) and women had a large sway in political society.

While Wikipedia has more details, the crux of the divide was that women and men both formed their own councils of government. Women would form a local council of Clan Mothers, with each mother naming a male Chief (Sachem) to the Grand Council of Sachems. If the Clan Mother disapproved of the choice of her Sachem, she could "knock his horns" (removing the ceremonial Deer antlers of leadership given to Sachems, effectively recalling them). While both councils would have to act to pass laws, the Women held the power as they could recall their Sachem and install one who did what they were told. Because the Iroquois were a confederacy of 5-6 tribes, the level of of government had Confederacy (Grand Council) > Tribal (Local Council) > Clan (Clan Mother).

In times of war, Clan Mothers would declare war by naming a male "War Chief" who would lead the all male war parties into battle. Because the society was matrilineal, the Clan Mother could push the men to become warriors by declaring those that would not fight cowards and thus barring them from marriage. Women could also name diplomats (called "Pine Chiefs"). All of these positions were similarly able to be recalled if the Clan Mother felt they acted in the wrong.

Essentially, it was a system where the woman were the dominant players in domestic politics but the men were charged with foreign relations duties.

Answer 7

The high woman to man ratio is not an answer I think. The actual problem for medieval populations was the amount of children you need to have to maintain stable population. It does not really matter how many females are there, if each one has to have (on average) 4-5 children to maintain stable population. The ratio you want is similar to what you have in a pack of lions, not very matriarchal group.

Female rulers are relatively easy, especially in some sort of collegiate rule, like Iroquis Confederation. In monarchy it is more difficult, though your queen could adopt children (rather than risk men taking over during the first and any subsequent pregnancy). But full matriarchal society will be way more difficult to maintain in medievalesque tech level.

What you need is not a high ratio of females to males but some biological change - you need near modern ratio of children reaching adulthood and much lower risk (again, modern like) of females dying in childbirth. In fantasy medieval society this could be achieved either by being naturally more healthy or by some sort of magical medicine. Having multiple births per pregnancy as a norm rather than rare occurrence would help as well.

Reducing the risks of pregnancy and the amount of time spent pregnant per individual female would naturally give rise to more equal society and increase the likelihood of matriarchal societies.

Answer 8

Cultural Norms leading to rulership being a womens role.

Men are labourers and soldiers. The lower class. Women are able to stay indoors while the men are off in the fields or at war. The women are left back in the cities, in control of trade, religion, education. They are the ones that actually keep the country running. If the men are of the raiding and pillaging variety, they may be away from home for months or years at a time; it seems only natural then that the women who stay at home and run the household/country are actually in charge.

Brandon Sanderson's "Stormlight Archives" has an example of this; not a matriarchal society, but a warrior society in which women occupy all of the above roles. Men aren't even taught to read - that is women's work, most men actively don't want to do it, and a main male character is branded a heretic when he learns. The Queen's role in bureaucracy is as important as the King's role in war. You could take this to the next step - the Queen / head of the household is vital in keeping the finances running. Men don't, not because they are less intelligent or anything, it's just taboo; and they don't have time/inclination what with all the manual labour they do.

If you're worried about military takeover, then extend women's role to the military: men do the soldiering, but the generals are women. This keeps the maximum number of experienced fighters on the front lines; and besides, just because you're good at swinging a sword doesn't mean you're good at directing troops or organising supply lines. Or maybe there have been attempted military coups by male generals, but the country quickly descended in to chaos as the illiterate/unskilled men try to take the places of the skilled women. After 2 or 3 failed attempts at this over the centuries, everyone knows it is better for women to do the ruling.

Edit: This could be a situation that initially arises from necessity due to geography or surrounding nations. Say the Fayli nation is in land that is particularly difficult to farm. They need significantly more labour to produce food than other nations - and so the women take up more of the 'management roles' in order to free up as many men as possible for farming. Similarly, they could be surrounded by aggressive neighbours and/or be a less populous nation than those neighbours. The Fayli again have the women take up the roles of religion, governance, trade in order to allow more men in to the military. The Fayli can defend themselves by having a military force disproportionately large for their population - but women are the ones at home running the government, bureaucracy, education and trade with the rest of the population in the cities.

Answer 9

Iroquois Confederation is said to be a matriarchy. The constitution online (http://www.amaxpro.com/DivaLyri/IroquoisConfederacy-The-Great-Law-of-Peace.pdf) mentions that "Lordship" is passed through the women. Only the "Lords" are members of the Council and are selected by the women who have the right. A War Chief is not a member of the Council. The confederation worked well because by working together, they had a larger fighting force than other tribes. There are other matriarchal societies around the world. A quick search can find a number of web sites on the subject.

Women do not need to be the fighters in order to have power. Generally speaking, when raiding and capturing of women and taking huge risks is common, the society is patriarchal. But when a society is more stable, women come into power. Women do a better job of managing (even today, women run companies are doing better on average then men run companies). When we want a system to manage farm land for the next 500 years, we would do well to consider how matriarchal societies have been able to do that already.

Answer 10

The old standby: religion.

Assume a society that developed a religion where communion with the deities was strictly the province of women, in a world where the skewed gender ratio meant most things that didn't require the biggest/strongest (which are statistically more likely to be men) is going to be carried out by women anyway simply because of the numbers. The society becomes more martial, using the example of Sparta, where all men are expected to be members of the warrior class. Initially, as being the primary holder of martial power, it's likely you might have men in charge, but women are going to be doing everything else: be the merchants, the educators, many of the tradespeople, and so on.

And, importantly, passing on how the god(desses) expect people to properly live.

One problem they'll have to avoid somehow is the agriculture trap: to keep the society fed, you need a lot of farmers making up a good chunk of the population. Pre-industrial farms depend on having a lot of kids to work those farms, but infant mortality rates were so high that a woman had to basically be pregnant all the time to have enough surviving offspring to maintain the society, which naturally has consequences for a woman's health. While upper-class women wouldn't have this issue, proportionally they'd represent only a fraction of the population so that vast majority of women a person would interact with would literally be barefoot and pregnant not because they were intentionally being oppressed but because they had to be to keep the society running, which is going to have psychological effects on people.

Now, you could go the Spartan way and rely on a large slave population, which is a possibility, but there is another one: have a food crop that is ridiculously hardy, prolific, doesn't require much in the way of care, preserves easily, is easily gathered with minimal effort, and is highly nutritious so that you don't farm so much as gather in a much smaller area. This means you don't need 75-80% or more of the population being farmers to supply food, which means you have a larger non-agricultural population, which means women don't have to be kicking out kids so often, which is going to be better for their health.

As others mentioned, lower infant mortality helps as well.

Okay, so now you've got a situation where you have a larger non-agricultural population, freeing up more men to be able to focus strictly on warfare, but religion is considered a purely female-led province, and women are doing most other non-warfare things. Which leads to education being female led. A king might be in charge with his sword-bros who hang out with him, but women are going to be the ones keeping to society running. And since the men are often marching off to war, someone has to stay to defend the community against the random bandits and raiders, which means women, which is going to improve the prestige of women since they're not only maintaining the running of their culture, in the end they're the last defenders.

It's only going to be a matter of time until some king decides it's more fun running around with the boys to raise hell in the neighbouring regions than doing all that boring governing stuff, and lo, the Head Priestess has conveniently had this revelation from the goddesses regarding that sort of thing...

Answer 11

In the real world, women strongly prefer to sleep with men who are self-directed and not with men who are obedient. If women were to reverse this preference, it would not take long for women to become the decision-makers in all areas of life. This would happen even more quickly and more completely if women were to openly conspire together over which men would be shown favor and which men would be incels. Within a few generations of this -- as long as women did not break rank -- the DNA of men who fail to adjust to this system would be erased from the gene pool.

Answer 12

Your societies main hurdles are being taken seriously for trade, communication, and defense when a Queen is at the helm of the nation in the early and mid stages of their development.

In the past patriarchies surrounding or recently coming form even further away nations to the new land who encountered the matriarchy would just ignore her country for these things until they relented and broke due to societal pressures created by no trade, no food, or constant defense against the outsiders who did not sign peace treaties with women.

Essentially they shunned them until a King was presented to them (breaking the near or constant Queen rulership) and then even if the matriarchy had a puppet King in order the Queen over time would be given less and less access to the meetings and dealings till she was barred wholly and only the fake King had to take over and it was then deemed beneficial to allow the transition. As more outsiders did not do business with a matriarchy.

The other death to a matriarchy comes in modern era via exposure to the outside world devaluing it’s system on the sole fact they have women as their leaders.

Warfare can be taken on by women as well as men the Trung Sisters fought China alone with their 32 female generals and unknown many more for males as an example. As they noted in WW2 women in general are slow to want to kill but when you get them to the point they want to do so you can’t stop them.

Yet we also have many women in WW2 who heard their country was going to war or it was incoming then made legal attempts the next day to join the military when that failed they'd then prioritize (1) illegally entering the military in either disguise or just walk/transport themselves there themselves (2) join a more feminine favored way to contribute to war like nurse then persuade the command on site to let them into combat, or (3) give up and find another way to help the war effort (4) start/find/join armed resistance. Their own journals (suppressed after the war by publishers) explained they had motivations of love, pride, patriotism, or protection of their homeland for their reasons.

So your matriarchy will have warring Queens and Queens of peace, good, bad, and horrid, their struggle will be not be against how many women have kids in their society it’s in the patriarchies surrounding them not excluding them from trade and treaties due to them having a Queen this has killed many matriarchies. If a nation denies yours trade wound or kill them into submission.

Isolation seems to be for the majority of matriarchies their best friend as war was not much a factor to them and then they were opened up to the world after all the wars in their region was done for, but this is also a reason why they are not in the modern era as well. But for the minority that did not have isolation knew when to strike, when to make peace, and when to brutalize their neighbors.

Men in your society could find a limited worth in war but they’re told and shown since birth it is not a honored trait in men to be war like it is an exception a man must be put into war for necessity not for sheer fun and whim of the Queen so he should feel while he is in danger he is not being placed so without care from the Queen and society overall. And you may not see a man who leads all forces due to the political and optical glass ceiling effect put upon him.

So would the matriarchy allow a man with skill to rise in a field of interest to him? Yes, but they may not glorify him like patriarchies do. This male would be odd and probably seen as a whore “he slept his way in there” or his skill is just luck that will pass. If he holds onto that position he will meet a glass ceiling that he can go no further and he will never feel like he fits in with his female co-workers nor will all of them see him as equal some will but others will not shake off their views of him as a whore or boss favorite pet.

There also maybe a held back male force for national breeding the society literally will not allow x amount of men to be slain for battle. Women will be drafted though they already will make up a portion of your army maybe 40% at the start already. All women serve without exception x amount of years inservice all women know how to fight most likely groomed into this starting at age 10 or so to prepare them for whatever age you wish to use them in national defense only the men who sign up for war training consideration will know how to fight.

Matriarchies prioritize women for property, resources, education, inheritance, awards, decisions, men’s aggression issues, or that women are seen as more stabilizing overall to the societies functionality, and other things not based on how many kids they can have or give to the nation.

Some matriarchies may allow men in limited numbers into areas of the society while others shutter men completely as they’re deemed incapable or should remain unburdened by the trouble society can thrust onto him.

Answer 13

Being in leadership in the military - even at the top of the hierarchy - could be culturally considered as a role of service rather than a position of power. As long as the military leaders cannot choose who to go to war with, the real power still belongs to the women in charge who make such decisions.

Answer 14

There are cultures in Africa where the king and queen rule together, but have a clear separation of powers. Often the queen is responsible for domestic affairs (administration and law) while the king is responsible for foreign affairs (diplomacy and warfare). You could extrapolate from such a culture and create a similar separation in the government which then became a trendsetter for all levels of society.

Answer 15

As I said in comment, I disagree with the answer about sex ratio. So here is my answer, rather simple, historically accurate:

War is a matter of volunteer units, trained and financed by one or two owners. The owner is at the disposal of the government. Men are at thetop of all those units.

But in such a system, as in Europe during the 16th-17th centuries, military work is not well-seen. There is a famous painting about that showing a son being recruited by a soldier, and all the family is aggressive or awared by this situation.

So, in your world, women have taken an important place in the society, for any reason you want. They lead the government, but military is still in the hands of men because their work as a military is not socially valuable.

A similar situation could be obtained with a "Mamluk system".

Answer 16

You misunderstood how medieval People became (usually) military leaders

If you base this off of medieval Europe: Military leaders at the time were usually nobles. Noble families (at least in the generations after enoblement) didn't stay nobles because their heads and heirs were the strongest fighters. They stayed on top because they owned and controlled important ressources, were good at politics (comes with having the ressources to afford a political education), and if they were militarily threathened, were good at raising troops to defend themselves (comes with having the ressources necessary to afford equipment and training) and were capable strategists and tacticians (comes with having the ressources to afford a military education).

Have 1) a matriliniear inheritance system and female-only landownership, 2) have a man's wifes be usually related among each other, and 3) have previous military service or something related be a prerequisite for men to be allowed to marry. That keeps institutional power in female hand, solves the problem of how to have a man marry into only one family, and means that basically all your men will be members of the military at some point and have less involvement in the civilian sector. It also means 4) that the peope raising and commanding troops will be majorily women, while the bulk of the troops will be men. This means whenever you have grat losses, you're not going to loose a lot of women and therefore loose out at the repopulation game, because women will a) be a minority in your military and b) the vast majority of your female poulation will be safe at home.

Another thing to think about: Standing armies were usually not a thing in the middle ages. Too expensive.

In conclusion: Women in your society don't need to be stronger than men or have female exclusive magical powers. They just need to control the ressources. Therefore point 1).

Justify with cultural and religious reasons as needed.

Answer 17

Just like in real life.

A few years ago, Barack Obama, a feminist, was head of the USA, and head of the military. He was known for having his wife be very involved in meetings and politics and being very open to feminist proposals and ideas.

He also waged several wars and had control of nuclear weapons that could destroy the world.

Have this be the norm, with female based groups having a great deal of political power. They have quotas for female politicians, they have female friendly politics.

Those men that do rise up in the hierarchy have no gender loyalty, and tend to rise up to appease female voters or elites.

Women would be recognized, due to the female focused politics, as being superior at a variety of tasks, and so would be dominant in areas outside of physical strength, while men could fight and die in wars and do dangerous and backbreaking work in fields.

This could be reinforced by an education system that focused on teaching men how to lift things and fight and an education system for women that taught them how to be cultured and make things and talk to people.

Answer 18

This is fiction, correct? What about culling male offspring to intentionally increase the female:male ratio in favor of women. The surviving males would likely be chosen based on his father’s characteristics, and perhaps would need to be brought in from the “outside” to prevent inbreeding. There is evidence that suggests that humans “tamed” themselves by killing off violent males, so this would be similar, except it would be done in a more strategic way to support the matriarchy. If there are less males being born, there will be less violence, fewer patriarchies to protect against, and the remaining males will be raised by matriarchy and will likely be supported by and of the system. This system may end violence in humans as we know it, and as such females could stick to their nature of non-violence without fear from male aggression (which thanks to modern technology is arguably the only predator to female humans). Btw, I would read your book, it sounds really cool!

Answer 19

Your problem solves itself.

If the ratio of women to men is 3:1, then (due to the simple fact that only women have wombs, and your society has 3x their number) the population would skyrocket. Fayli Empire would have no fear of ever losing a war, as they would produce far more citizens/soldiers/laborers per year than any other kingdom or society.

Which means, than eventually Fayli would conquer everyone by sheer attrition, and thus their military would be reduced to just a small peace-keeping force.

Medieval-style warfare, and most medieval labor did not need physical strength. It just needed stamina, determination and hard work. A society that can birth children 3 times as fast is going to brute force through all their problems. Sure,conscripting teen girls into your armies is less efficient than conscripting young lads, but if you can field an army of 30 000 girls when the next kingdom can field only 10 000 young men, you will steamroll over them. Even if individually a young infantyrwoman is weaker than a young infantryman, she can hold a spear-wall just fine, shoot a crossbow, dig trenches etc. More importantly, girls can ride horses and shoot recurve bows just as well, if not better than men can, so your society could have giant all-female Mongol-like armies.

Same with labor. Even the most physically demanding forms of medieval work can be done by women. Stone masonry, blacksmithing, mining, all the things that seemingly require great strength, they actually call for stamina and patience, which women have.

As long as your society is medieval technologically, it will have no choice but to develop into an effective matriarchy (or rather gynarchy, and matrilinearity, with actual matriarchy being optional, but very likely). Men would be delegated to be the "tip of the spear" in the military, as elite troops rather than leaders, and for the absolute most physically demanding jobs, like being the face-man in a mine. But everything else women would dominate by sheer numbers, and eventually push men out of positions of power, even if they did not mean to.

Answer 20

Woman in antiquity would be especially dependent on their husbands because childbirth was in itself quite a burden. A woman with a big pregnant belly would not be able to move around well to gather food, wood/dung/coal/fuel, deal with any beast of burden, etc. Then after childbirth the woman would be expected to breastfeed the child for some period of time, and that would consume her time and leave her also unable to get food, fuel, etc. To have one man provide for one wife and her children is already a burden so a biological solution would be to allow for the woman to contribute more labor while pregnant and nursing children.

Have the women be larger than normal. Large enough that they can harvest crops while 9 months pregnant and not have their belly in the way. That might make them taller than a man but still weaker in a fight.

Perhaps the children are born smaller and/or sooner so as to not to leave the mother as immobile while carrying them. Perhaps the children develop their strength sooner so they can be weaned, toilet trained, and so on to allow the mothers more freedom.

Perhaps have the environment such that gathering food and fuel isn't as much of a burden. The land could be especially... verdant? I think that's the word. Have the plants produce plenty of nutritious fruit, that's easy to gather and prepare, stays fresh for long periods, etc. The less time plowing, planting, weeding, and such the better because that frees up the women for raising children and skilled crafts while the men are the police force, miners, soldiers, and such where strength is far more valuable.

One thing that freed up women's time to be leaders and in skilled trades was industrialization. This is apparently a preindustrial society so maybe instead of having trains and tractors to aid in farming and commerce there's some beasts of burden that are so powerful that they can pull truly massive plows. The beasts are so docile that they can be "started up", "steered", and "parked" like a mindless tractor. The women that... husbands?... the beasts are so skilled in training them that the women can kind of whisper in their ear that the work day is done that the beast lies down to sleep immediately, only to awake the next day when the woman gives a gentle tug on the ear as if pushing an ignition button on a John Deere tractor. To keep the beast from being it's own burden it might need huge flat feet like an elephant, and maybe many legs almost like a caterpillar to avoid compacting the soil from its bulk like a... caterpillar... tractor?

Perhaps the beasts in this world aren't mindless like a tractor but rather intelligent enough to carry out some tasks that people would have had to do. Maybe they can be harnessed like a pack of mules to a wagon then driven down rows of corn like a combine harvester to pick corn cobs with an elephant like tusk and toss it in the wagon.

Perhaps only the women can perform this... husbandry (yep, making that joke again) of the animals so well which means the men rarely bother trying. Maybe the women are smarter than the men, more patient with the training, have use of magic/hormones/whatever that gets the animals' attention like no man could.

Clearly such beasts would give a military advantage so there could be some means for the men to control the animals in battle, but perhaps not with the same docile nature and precision needed for farming. Or maybe a female general/captain/officer/whatever guides the men in battle from the back of one of these beasts? She's not a foot soldier but a tactician.

Other answers mentioned that it could be in this culture that the women inherit the property and so control the wealth, which means the women rule. I'd add the trope of "mama's baby, papa's maybe". With men off to war, to the mines, or whatever, so often there could be a dispute on who would be the father of any child. If the chances of survival in battle is sufficiently low then it likely doesn't matter as much since a woman that lost a husband in battle would often inherit the land even in some medieval cultures. A woman that has the property, the children, control of the beasts of burden, and so on might not see the loss of a husband like we would in our world. She'd be saddened, of course, but because she will still be able to produce enough food with her own labor and the labor of her beasts the loss won't leave her cold and hungry like losing the one man in her life that was capable of the farming. She would not feel the same pressure to find a husband willing to take her in, instead the men would seek her so they could share in some of her wealth, expect her to bear a child with him, and so he may have some influence on her and any decisions she has concerning politics, military tactics, etc.

I see having women outnumber men to such a level meaning the women will have to do a lot of the work that men would be expected to do if the ratio were closer to 1:1. There's no "Rosie the riveter" style of skilled labor available if there's no factories with steam engines and electric motors but the women could perhaps be the physicians, lawyers, engineers, carpenters, tanners, cobblers, tinkers, masons, wheelwrights, and animal... husbanders? (I guess husbander is a word, seems odd for some reason.) For that to work and still be able to propagate the species then the women would need to remain relatively unhindered by pregnancy and care for infants.

Answer 21

Parasitic parallel society with a trapdoor

Woman rule the main society, that produces food and new members. The military is sort of separated into a parallel society, totally disconnected from the rest. Similar to monastery monks- but without any fields or farm animals, they are deeply dependent.

Ironically war is the only time, this rule is broken, when the sequestered man, get to invade- the civil society of another society - or get to defend a city. As most of them are used to a gay military, finding out your hetero, armed and dangerous in a city - leads to ahem.. problems. As in defections, psychotic breaks and priestesses desperately trying to keep things under control.

So how does that military monastery replenish it ranks? The same way any military does, with surplus sons, who when of military age, get send of to some mountain fort never to be seen again. Worked for the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taliban and the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swiss_Guard. Which points to some problems.

The military can not be allowed to become empress-maker ala (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Praetorian_Guard) and it can not be allowed to be housed in or near the city- or replace the police forces, courts or any part of societies systems.

Answer 22

The power of persuasion vs. power of brute force.

After thinking about this some more I thought I'd take the premise I set in another answer and take it from another angle. To get one human to get another human to follow their commands they need to use either persuasion or brute force. The human body has only so much resources for either, and for a woman the biological necessity of childbirth leaves her with less physical strength and so to be the dominate force in society women need to have considerable powers of persuasion. Perhaps enhanced with a bit of magic.

Men in this realm of dominant women would likely be selected over time to evolve as obedient consorts, laborers, and soldiers while the men of a rival nation may not be so easily persuaded by the words and magic of a matriarch of an estate, village, or nation. With the men going out often to fish, mine, soldier, and such necessary tasks the women use their power of persuasion over animals to make up for the scarcity of men.

In particular wolves could perform the duties of a police force, hunters, and sometimes beasts of burden like sled dogs. While the women have the power of persuasion that allows them to speak softly they also have a "big stick" in the form of a wolf pack under their control. This power of persuasion would extend to other animals like cattle and horses, perhaps more exotic animals like elephants and bison that could serve well as more powerful beast than a horse or ox as well as to cause chaos on a battlefield. If you believe that a herd of cattle would be near worthless in battle then you haven't seen the damage done by a small herd of steers on a stampede.

Consider a rival king comes to negotiate with the queen of this realm/nation/whichever. He has a couple advisors and perhaps a dozen men as bodyguards and aids. The king enters the queen's great hall to see her with a couple women as aids/advisors and only two men that appear to be the sum total of the palace guard. Oh, and a dozen "dogs" that appear to be exceedingly docile and half asleep at her feet.

Negotiations start and the wolves are on "safe", they pay little attention to anything. Things are not going well so the queen makes a motion with her hand and the wolves are set to "semi-auto", they sit up to look about then sneeze or bark at any man that moves too much. The queen clicks her fingers, the wolves are on "full-auto" to where they are on their feet growling, snarling, baring their teeth, ready to attack anyone that threatens the queen. The soldiers attack, the queen whistles, the wolves are on "battleshort", the wolves are so far under the queen's spell that they feel no pain, pity, or remorse, they will not stop until all rivals are dead.

I'll admit that the last paragraph was in part to set up a reference to Terminator, and have an excuse to use that cool word "battleshort". With that level of persuasion over animals the women can fill many roles that men would normally fill in societies where there's near 1-to-1 parity of sexes, and the persuasion so powerful over the animals under her control they would perform suicidal acts if so ordered. They'd need the animals to make up for their lesser strength than men, thus giving them the freedom to bear many children and be the skilled laborers close to the safety of the palace, village, whatever as they'd lack modern technologies like firearms, computers, electric motors, and nuclear power plants.

With that level of persuasion the women of this realm have the respect of their men, and instill fear in any rival men that enter the realm. With that kind of power they more than make up for their lesser physical strength.