Heide Göttner-Abendroth (born February 8, 1941 in Langewiesen, Germany) is a German feminist advocating a branch of feminist anthropology known as Matriarchy Studies (also Modern Matriarchal Studies), focusing on the study of matriarchal or matrilineal societies.
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Göttner-Abendroth was born during World War II, and at the age of 12 escaped from East Germany to West Germany. She has a PhD in philosophy from the University of Munich (1973). She became active in second wave feminism from 1976 and came to be considered one of the pioneers of women's studies in West Germany.
Göttner-Abendroth worked as a Reader in philosophy at Munich University in the 1970s, but, due to her activism and harsh criticism of her academic work, she quit and became an independent scholar, founding the International Academy for Modern Matriarchal Studies and Matriarchal Spirituality (HAGIA) in 1986. She received a scholarship from the University of Bremen in 1992. Her own account of the lack of acceptance of her Matriarchal Studies in mainstream academia was published as Die Diskriminierung der Matriarchatsforschung. Eine moderne Hexenjagd "the discrimination of Matriarchal Studies - a modern witch-hunt" in 2003.[1]
Göttner-Abendroth's International Academy for Modern Matriarchal Studies and Matriarchal Spirituality (HAGIA) was founded in 1986. It aims to combine the "intellectual, political, artistic, and spiritual" in its events.[2]
Modern Matriarchal Studies stands in the tradition of 1970s second wave feminism, pioneered by Merlin Stone's When God Was a Woman. Feminist theories of matriarchy remained current throughout the 1970s, and in German scholarship during the 1980s. Göttner-Abendroth has continued to publish on the topic into the 2000s, and has organized two World Congresses on Matriarchal Studies, in 2003[3] and 2005.[4][5]
Göttner-Abendroth defines Modern Matriarchal Studies as the "investigation and presentation of non-patriarchal societies", and matriarchies as "non-hierarchical, horizontal societies of matrilineal kinship", effectively defining matriarchy as "non-patriarchic matrilineal societies". She has also defined matriarchy as characterized by the sharing of power equally between the two genders,[6] an egalirarian model.[7] By Göttner-Abendroth's definition, a matriarchal society is equivalent to an "egalitarian and peaceful society". Such societies aren't described as "matriarchal" in mainstream anthropology, but as matrilineal. Mainstream anthropology considers "male dominance in the public or political realm" a human cultural universal[8] and has abandoned the 19th century notion of "primitive" matriarchies in favour of discussion of matrilineality and matrilocality, forms of societies that are actually on record. Göttner-Abendroth defends this departure from the usual meaning of the -archy suffix as using it in its etymological meaning of ἀρχή 'beginning', according to which matriarchy would not mean 'rule of mothers' but 'at the beginning the mothers'. However, Greek ἀρχή has the double meaning of 'beginning, origin' and 'rule, dominion', and the -archy suffix originates with -ἀρχία, which has the meaning of 'leadership, rule' exclusively, as in ἀν-αρχία 'lack of a leader, lawlessness, anarchy'.