Portraits of Matriarchy: Where Grandmothers Are Still in Charge

The Mosuo villages in the Chinese Himalayas are trying to hold on to their ancient, complex social structures that value female power and decision-making.

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By Karolin Kl眉ppel

4 MIN READ

Nov 9, 2020

Life around Lugu Lake鈥攈igh up in the Himalayas, straddling China鈥檚 Yunnan and Sichuan provinces鈥攈as been changing rapidly. Until relatively recently, the Mosuo, a Chinese ethnic minority of about 40,000 people, enjoyed hundreds of years of relative stability in a complex social structure that values female power and decision-making. Most famous among Mosuo traditions is the practice of the 鈥渨alking marriage鈥�: women may choose and change partners as they wish. Mosuo children stay with their mothers鈥� families for life, and men only visit their female partners by walking to their houses at night.

Because the head of a Mosuo household is always a woman, responsible for all financial decisions and the passing of the family name and property, the Mosuo are often characterized as a matriarchal society. Reality is a little more complex. For example, women hold no official political power. Yet according to Chuan-Kang Shih, an expert on the Mosuo and an anthropology professor at the University of Florida, the Mosuo social system is underpinned by a fundamental belief that women are more capable than men, mentally and even physically.

My portraits focus on older Mosuo matriarchs, the dabu, who carry on despite outside pressures. Since China’s Cultural Revolution in the past century, when the Mosuo religion was forbidden and couples were forced to marry, this social system has faced challenges. Fewer Mosuo women are able to sustain a way of life traditionally centered on large, matrilineal clans sharing their household income.