I. Studies of Recent and Extant Matriarchal Societies

Functioning, matriarchal societies presently exist or once existed on all the continents. Not all of the works cited below refer directly to matriarchal patterns, but they all contributed valuable studies since used by this field of research. Besides the research of Western scholars, Indigenous researchers have started to investigate their own cultures, allowing an awareness of matriarchal patterns as undistorted as possible by colonial assumptions.