Әйел билігі қоғамдық жүйесі

Social system with female rule

Matriarchy is a social system in which positions of dominance and authority are primarily held by women. In a broader sense it can also extend to moral authority, social privilege, and control of property. While those definitions apply in general English, definitions specific to anthropology and feminism differ in some respects. Most anthropologists hold that there are no known societies that are unambiguously matriarchal. While some may consider any non patriarchal system to be matriarchal, most academics exclude those systems from matriarchies as strictly defined.

According to the Oxford English Dictionary (OED), matriarchy is a "form of social organization in which the mother or oldest female is the head of the family, and descent and relationship are reckoned through the female line; government or rule by a woman or women." A popular definition, according to James Peoples and Garrick Bailey, is "female dominance". Within the academic discipline of cultural anthropology, according to the OED, matriarchy is a "culture or community in which such a system prevails" A matriarchy is a society in which females, especially mothers, have the central roles of political leadership, moral authority, and control of property, but does not include a society that occasionally is led by a female for nonmatriarchal reasons or an occupation in which females generally predominate without reference to matriarchy, such as prostitution or women's auxiliaries of organizations run by men. According to Lawrence A. Kuzner in 1997, A. R. Radcliffe Brown argued in 1924 that the definitions of matriarchy and patriarchy had "logical and empirical failings ( ) [and] were too vague to be scientifically useful". Most academics exclude egalitarian nonpatriarchal systems from matriarchies more strictly defined. According to Heide Göttner Abendroth, a reluctance to accept the existence of matriarchies might be based on a specific culturally biased notion of how to define matriarchy: because in a patriarchy men rule over women, a matriarchy has frequently been conceptualized as women ruling over men, while she believed that matriarchies are egalitarian. The word matriarchy, for a society politically led by females, especially mothers, who also control property, is often interpreted to mean the genderal opposite of patriarchy, but it is not an opposite. According to Peoples and Bailey, the view of anthropologist Peggy Reeves Sanday is that matriarchies are not a mirror or inverted form of patriarchies but rather that a matriarchy "emphasizes maternal meanings where 'maternal symbols are linked to social practices influencing the lives of both sexes and where women play a central role in these practices. Journalist Margot Adler wrote, "literally,  ["matriarchy"] means government by mothers, or more broadly, government and power in the hands of women." Barbara Love and Elizabeth Shanklin wrote, "by 'matriarchy,' we mean a non alienated society: a society in which women, those who produce the next generation, define motherhood, determine the conditions of motherhood, and determine the environment in which the next generation is reared." According to Cynthia Eller, "'matriarchy' can be thought of  as a shorthand description for any society in which women's power is equal or superior to men's and in which the culture centers around values and life events described as 'feminine.'" Eller wrote that the idea of matriarchy mainly rests on two pillars, romanticism and modern social criticism. The notion of matriarchy was meant to describe something like a utopia placed in the past in order to legitimate contemporary social criticism. With respect to a prehistoric matriarchal Golden Age, according to Barbara Epstein, "matriarchy  means a social system organized around matriliny and goddess worship in which women have positions of power." According to Adler, in the Marxist tradition, it usually refers to a pre class society "where women and men share equally in production and power." According to Adler, "a number of feminists note that few definitions of the word [matriarchy], despite its literal meaning, include any concept of power, and they suggest that centuries of oppression have made it impossible for women to conceive of themselves with such power. "</blockquote>

The Matriarchal Studies school led by Göttner Abendroth calls for an even more inclusive redefinition of the term: Göttner Abendroth defines Modern Matriarchal Studies as the "investigation and presentation of non patriarchal societies", effectively defining matriarchy as non patriarchy. She has also defined matriarchy as characterized by the sharing of power equally between the two genders. According to Diane LeBow, "matriarchal societies are often described as  egalitarian  ", although anthropologist Ruby Rohrlich has written of "the centrality of women in an egalitarian society." Matriarchy is also the public formation in which the woman occupies the ruling position in a family. because a quarter of them were headed by single women; thus, families composing a substantial minority of a substantial minority could be enough for the latter to constitute a matriarchy within a larger non matriarchal society with non matriarchal political dynamics. Etymologically, it is from Latin māter (genitive mātris), "mother" and Greek ἄρχειν arkhein, "to rule". The notion of matriarchy was defined by Joseph François Lafitau (1681–1746), who first named it ginécocratie. According to the OED, the earliest known attestation of the word matriarchy is in 1885. Terms with similar etymology are also used in various social sciences and humanities to describe matriarchal or matriological aspects of social, cultural, and political processes. Adjective matriological is derived from the noun matriology that comes from Latin word māter (mother) and Greek word λογος (logos, teaching about). The term matriology was used in theology and history of religion as a designation for the study of particular motherly aspects of various female deities. The term was subsequently borrowed by other social sciences and humanities and its meaning was widened in order to describe and define particular female dominated and female centered aspects of cultural and social life. The male alternative for matriology is patriology, with patriarchy being the male alternative to matriarchy.

In their works, Johann Jakob Bachofen and Lewis Morgan used such terms and expressions as mother right, female rule, gyneocracy, and female authority. All these terms meant the same: the rule by females (mother or wife). Although Bachofen and Lewis Morgan confined the "mother right" inside households, it was the basis of female influence upon the whole society. The authors of the classics did not think that gyneocracy meant 'female government' in politics. They were aware of the fact that the sexual structure of government had no relation to domestic rule and to roles of both sexes.

Some people who sought evidence for the existence of a matriarchy often mixed matriarchy with anthropological terms and concepts describing specific arrangements in the field of family relationships and the organization of family life, such as matrilineality and matrilocality. These terms refer to intergenerational relationships (as matriarchy may), but do not distinguish between males and females insofar as they apply to specific arrangements for sons as well as daughters from the perspective of their relatives on their mother's side. Accordingly, these concepts do not represent matriarchy as 'power of women over men' but instead familial dynamics.

Anthropologists have begun to use the term matrifocality. There is some debate concerning the terminological delineation between matrifocality and matriarchy. Matrifocal societies are those in which women, especially mothers, occupy a central position. Anthropologist R. T. Smith refers to matrifocality as the kinship structure of a social system whereby the mothers assume structural prominence. The term does not necessarily imply domination by women or mothers. The term matricentric means 'having a mother as head of the family or household'. Matristic: Feminist scholars and archeologists such as Marija Gimbutas, Gerda Lerner, and Riane Eisler label their notion of a "woman centered" society surrounding Mother Goddess worship during prehistory (in Paleolithic and Neolithic Europe) and in ancient civilizations by using the term matristic rather than matriarchal. Marija Gimbutas states that she uses "the term matristic simply to avoid the term matriarchy with the understanding that it incorporates matriliny." Matrilineality, in which descent is traced through the female line, is sometimes conflated with historical matriarchy. Sanday favors redefining and reintroducing the word matriarchy, especially in reference to contemporary matrilineal societies such as the Minangkabau. The 19th century belief that matriarchal societies existed was due to the transmission of "economic and social power  through kinship lines" so that "in a matrilineal society all power would be channeled through women. Women may not have retained all power and authority in such societies  , but they would have been in a position to control and dispense power not unlike the nagging wife or the domineering mother."

Most anthropologists hold that there are no known societies that are unambiguously matriarchal. According to J. M. Adovasio, Olga Soffer, and Jake Page, no true matriarchy is known to have actually existed. Anthropologist Donald Brown's list of human cultural universals (viz., features shared by nearly all current human societies) includes men being the "dominant element" in public political affairs, which he asserts is the contemporary opinion of mainstream anthropology. Matriarchs, according to Peoples and Bailey, do exist; there are "individual matriarchs of families and kin groups." stated that "the predominance of a supreme goddess is probably a reflection from the practice of matriarchy which at all times characterized Elamite civilization to a greater or lesser degree, before this practice was overthrown by the patriarchy".

Tacitus claimed in his book Germania that in "the nations of the Sitones woman is the ruling sex." Cucuteni–Trypillia culture has been frequently discussed as a matriarchal society before its overthrow by the patriarchy, including its goddess art, connecting the moon, menstrual cycles, agricultural seasons, and life and death. Anne Helene Gjelstad describes the women on the Estonian islands Kihnu and Manija as "the last matriarchal society in Europe" because "the older women here take care of almost everything on land as their husbands travel the seas".

Possible matriarchies in Burma are, according to Jorgen Bisch, the Padaungs and, according to Andrew Marshall, the Kayaw.

The Mosuo culture, which is in China near Tibet, is frequently described as matriarchal. The term matrilineal is sometimes used, and, while more accurate, still does not reflect the full complexity of their social organization. In fact, it is not easy to categorize Mosuo culture within traditional Western definitions. They have aspects of a matriarchal culture: women are often the head of the house, inheritance is through the female line, and women make business decisions. However, unlike in a true matriarchy, political power tends to be in the hands of males, and the current culture of the Mosuo has been heavily shaped by their minority status.

In India, of communities recognized in the national Constitution as Scheduled Tribes, "some  [are] matriarchal and matrilineal" "and thus have been known to be more egalitarian". According to interviewer Anuj Kumar, Manipur, India, "has a matriarchal society", but this may not be scholarly. In Kerala, Nairs, Thiyyas, Brahmins of Payyannoor village and Muslims of North Malabar and in Karnataka, Bunts and Billavas follow the matrilineal system.

Anthropologist Peggy Reeves Sanday has said that the Minangkabau society may be a matriarchy.

According to William S. Turley, "the role of women in traditional Vietnamese culture was determined [partly] by  indigenous customs bearing traces of matriarchy", affecting "different social classes" That being said, even after adopting the patriarchal Chinese system, Vietnamese women, especially peasant women, still held a higher position than women in most patriarchal societies. According to Chiricosta, the legend of Âu Cơ is said to be evidence of "the presence of an original 'matriarchy' in North Vietnam and [it] led to the double kinship system, which developed there  [and which] combined matrilineal and patrilineal patterns of family structure and assigned equal importance to both lines." Chiricosta said that other scholars relied on "this 'matriarchal' aspect of the myth to differentiate Vietnamese society from the pervasive spread of Chinese Confucian patriarchy," and that "resistance to China's colonization of Vietnam  [combined with] the view that Vietnam was originally a matriarchy  [led to viewing] women's struggles for liberation from (Chinese) patriarchy as a metaphor for the entire nation's struggle for Vietnamese independence," and therefore, a "metaphor for the struggle of the matriarchy to resist being overthrown by the patriarchy." According to Keith Weller Taylor, "the matriarchal flavor of the time is  attested by the fact that Trung Trac's mother's tomb and spirit temple have survived, although nothing remains of her father", and the "society of the Trung sisters" was "strongly matrilineal". According to Donald M. Seekins, an indication of "the strength of matriarchal values" was that a woman, Trưng Trắc, with her younger sister Trưng Nhị, raised an army of "over 80,000 soldiers  [in which] many of her officers were women",

Friedrich Engels, in 1884, claimed that, in the earliest stages of human social development, there was group marriage and that therefore paternity was disputable, whereas maternity was not, so that a family could be traced only through the female line. This was a materialist interpretation of Bachofen's Mutterrecht. Engels speculated that the domestication of animals increased material wealth, which was claimed by men. Engels said that men wanted to control women to use as laborers and to pass on wealth to their children, requiring monogamy; as patriarchy rose, women's status declined until they became mere objects in the exchange trade between men, causing the global defeat of the female sex and the rise of individualism and competition. According to Eller, Engels may have been influenced with respect to women's status by August Bebel, according to whom matriarchy naturally resulted in communism, while patriarchy was characterized by exploitation. Austrian writer Bertha Diener (or Helen Diner), wrote Mothers and Amazons (1930), the first work to focus on women's cultural history, a classic of feminist matriarchal study. Her view is that all past human societies were originally matriarchal, while most later shifted to patriarchy and degenerated. The controversy intensified with The White Goddess by Robert Graves (1948) and his later analysis of classical Greek mythology, focusing on the reconstruction of earlier myths that had conjecturally been rewritten after a transition from matriarchal to patriarchal religion in very early historical times. From the 1950s, Marija Gimbutas developed a theory of an Old European culture in Neolithic Europe with matriarchal traits, which had been replaced by the patriarchal system of the Proto Indo Europeans in the Bronze Age. However, other anthropologists warned that "the goddess worship or matrilocality that evidently existed in many paleolithic societies was not necessarily associated with matriarchy in the sense of women's power over men. Many societies can be found that exhibit those qualities along with female subordination." According to Eller, Gimbutas had a large part in constructing a myth of historical matriarchy by examining Eastern European cultures that never really resembled the alleged universal matriarchy. She asserts that in "actually documented primitive societies" of recent (historical) times, paternity is never ignored and that the sacred status of goddesses does not automatically increase female social status, and she interprets utopian matriarchy as an invented inversion of antifeminism. From the 1970s, ideas of matriarchy were taken up by popular writers of second wave feminism such as Riane Eisler, Elizabeth Gould Davis, and Merlin Stone, and expanded with the speculations of Margaret Murray on witchcraft, by the Goddess movement, and in feminist Wicca. "A Golden Age of matriarchy" was prominently presented by Charlene Spretnak and "encouraged" by Stone and Eisler, but, at least for the Neolithic Age, it has been denounced as feminist wishful thinking in works such as The Inevitability of Patriarchy, Why Men Rule, Goddess Unmasked, and The Myth of Matriarchal Prehistory. The idea is not emphasized in third wave feminism. J. F. del Giorgio insists on a matrifocal, matrilocal, matrilineal Paleolithic society.

According to Rohrlich, "many scholars are convinced that Crete was a matriarchy, ruled by a queen priestess" and the "Cretan civilization" was "matriarchal" before "1500 BC," when it was overrun and colonized by the patriarchy. Also according to Rohrlich, "in the early Sumerian city states 'matriarchy seems to have left something more than a trace. One common misconception among historians of the Bronze Age such as Stone and Eisler is the notion that the Semites were matriarchal while the Indo Europeans practiced a patriarchal system. An example of this view is found in Stone's When God Was a Woman, wherein she makes the case that the worship of Yahweh was an Indo European invention superimposed on an ancient matriarchal Semitic nation. Evidence from the Amorites and pre Islamic Arabs, however, indicates that the primitive Semitic family was in fact patriarchal and patrilineal. However, not all scholars agree. Anthropologist and Biblical scholar Raphael Patai writes in The Hebrew Goddess that the Jewish religion, far from being pure monotheism, contained from earliest times strong polytheistic elements, chief of which was the cult of Asherah, the mother goddess. A story in the Biblical Book of Judges places the worship of Asherah in the 12th century BC. Originally a Canaanite goddess, her worship was adopted by Hebrews who intermarried with Canaanites. She was worshipped in public and was represented by carved wooden poles. Numerous small nude female figurines of clay were found all over ancient Palestine and a seventh century Hebrew text invokes her aid for a woman giving birth. Shekinah is the name of the feminine holy spirit who embodies both divine radiance and compassion. Exemplifying various traits associated with mothers, she comforts the sick and dejected, accompanies the Jews whenever they are exiled, and intercedes with God to exercise mercy rather than to inflict retribution on sinners. While not a creation of the Hebrew Bible, Shekinah appears in a slightly later Aramaic translation of the Bible in the first or second century C. E., according to Patai. Initially portrayed as the presence of God, she later becomes distinct from God, taking on more physical attributes. Meanwhile, the Indo Europeans were known to have practiced multiple succession systems, and there is much better evidence of matrilineal customs among the Indo European Celts and Germanics than among any ancient Semitic peoples. Women ruled Sparta while the men were often away fighting, or when both kings were incapacitated or too young to rule. Gorgo, Queen of Sparta, was asked by a woman in Attica "You Spartan women are the only women that lord it over your men", to which Gorgo replied: "Yes, for we are the only women that are mothers of men!"

Arising in the period ranging from the Iron Age to the Middle Ages, several northwestern European mythologies from the Irish (e. g. Macha and Scáthach), the Brittonic (e. g. Rhiannon), and the Germanic (e. g. Grendel's mother and Nerthus) contain ambiguous episodes of primal female power which have been interpreted as folk evidence of matriarchal attitudes in pre Christian European Iron Age societies. Often transcribed from a retrospective, patriarchal, Romanised, and Catholic perspective, they hint at a possible earlier era when female power predominated. The first century historical British figure of Boudicca indicates that Brittonnic society permitted explicit female autocracy or a form of gender equality which contrasted strongly with the patriarchal Mediterranean civilisation that later overthrew it.

The Mosuo people are an ethnic group in southwest China. They are considered one of the most well known matriarchal societies, although many scholars assert that they are rather matrilineal. as of 2016, the sole heirs in the family are still daughters. Since 1990, when foreign tourism became permitted, tourists started visiting the Mosuo people. It was founded on an empty piece of land by women who fled their homes after being raped by British soldiers. They formed a safe haven in rural Samburu County in northern Kenya. Men of the same tribe established a village nearby from which to observe the women's village, and men suing to close the women's village. Although largely considered matrilineal, some women's studies scholars such as Roopleena Banerjee consider the Khasi to be matriarchal. Traditionally, the youngest daughter, called the Khadduh, receives and cares for ancestral property.

A legendary matriarchy related by several writers was Amazon society. According to Phyllis Chesler, "in Amazon societies, women were  mothers and their society's only political and religious leaders", as well as the only warriors and hunters; "queens were elected" and apparently "any woman could aspire to and achieve full human expression." Herodotus reported that the Sarmatians were descendants of Amazons and Scythians, and that their females observed their ancient maternal customs, "frequently hunting on horseback with their husbands; in war taking the field; and wearing the very same dress as the men". Moreover, said Herodotus, "no girl shall wed till she has killed a man in battle". Amazons came to play a role in Roman historiography. Julius Caesar spoke of the conquest of large parts of Asia by Semiramis and the Amazons. Although Strabo was sceptical about their historicity, the Amazons were taken as historical throughout late Antiquity. Several Church Fathers spoke of the Amazons as a real people. Medieval authors continued a tradition of locating the Amazons in the North, Adam of Bremen placing them at the Baltic Sea and Paulus Diaconus in the heart of Germania.

Robert Graves suggested that a myth displaced earlier myths that had to change when a major cultural change brought patriarchy to replace a matriarchy. According to this myth, in Greek mythology, Zeus is said to have swallowed his pregnant lover, the titan goddess Metis, who was carrying their daughter, Athena. The mother and child created havoc inside Zeus. Either Hermes or Hephaestus split Zeus's head, allowing Athena, in full battle armor, to burst forth from his forehead. Athena was thus described as being "born" from Zeus. The outcome pleased Zeus as it didn't fulfill the prophecy of Themis which (according to Aeschylus) predicted that Zeus will one day bear a son that would overthrow him.

According to Adler, "there is plenty of evidence of ancient societies where women held greater power than in many societies today. For example, Jean Markale's studies of Celtic societies show that the power of women was reflected not only in myth and legend but in legal codes pertaining to marriage, divorce, property ownership, and the right to rule although this was overthrown by the patriarchy."

The hypothesis of Basque matriarchism or theory of Basque matriarchism is a theoretical proposal launched by Andrés Ortiz Osés that maintains that the existence of a psychosocial structure centered or focused on the matriarchal feminine archetype (mother / woman, which finds in the archetype of the great Basque mother Mari, her precipitate as a projection of Mother Earth / nature) that "permeates, coagulates and unites the traditional Basque social group in a way that is different from the patriarchal Indo European peoples". This mythical matriarchal conception corresponds to the conception of the Basques, clearly reflected in their mythology. The Earth is the mother of the Sun and the Moon, compared to Indo European patriarchal conceptions, where the sun is reflected as a God, numen or male spirit. Prayers and greetings were dedicated to these two sisters at dawn and dusk, when they returned to the bosom of Mother Earth. Franz Karl Mayr, this philosopher argued that the archetypal background of Basque mythology had to be inscribed in the context of a Paleolithic dominated by the Great Mother, in which the cycle of Mari (goddess) and her metamorphoses offers all a typical symbolism of the matriarchal naturalistic context. According to the archetype of the Great Mother, this is usually related to fertility cults, as in the case of Mari, who is the determinant of fertility fecundity, the maker of rain or hail, that on whose telluric forces depend the crops, in space and time, life and death, luck (grace) and misfortune.

Bamberger (1974) examines several matriarchal myths from South American cultures and concludes that portraying the women from this matriarchal period as immoral often serves to restrain contemporary women in these societies, providing reason for the overthrow by the patriarchy.

Some theologies and theocracies limit or forbid women from being in civil government or public leadership or forbid them from voting, effectively criticizing and forbidding matriarchy. Within none of the following religions is the respective view necessarily universally held:
In Islam, some Muslim scholars hold a view that female political leadership should be restricted , according to Anne Sofie Roald [no]. The restriction has been attributed to a hadith of Muhammad, the founder and last prophet of Islam. The hadith says, according to Roald, "a people which has a woman as leader will never prosper." The 2001 author's paraphrase of the hadith, "the people who have a female leader will not succeed", is at The hadith's transmission, context, and meaning have been questioned, wrote Roald. According to Roald, the prohibition has also been attributed as an extension of a ban on women leading prayers "in mixed gatherings”. Possibly, Roald noted, the hadith applies only against being head of state and not other high office. One source, wrote Roald, would allow a woman to "occupy every position except that of khalīfa (the leader of all Muslims)." One exception to the head of state prohibition was accepted without a general acceptance of women in political leadership, Roald reported. Political activism at lower levels may be more acceptable to Islamist women than top leadership positions, said Roald. The Muslim Brotherhood has stated that women may not be president or head of state but may hold other public offices but, "as for judiciary office,  [t]he majority of jurispudents  have forbidden it completely." In a study of 82 Islamists in Europe, according to Roald, 80% said women could not be state leaders but 75% said women could hold other high positions. In 1994, the Muslim Brotherhood said that "social circumstances and traditions" may justify gradualism in the exercise of women's right to hold office (below head of state). Whether the Muslim Brothers still support that statement is unclear. As reported in 1953, Roald reported later, "Islamic organizations held a conference in the office of the Muslim Brothers  [and] claim[ed]  that it had been proven that political rights for women were contrary to religion". Some nations have specific bans. In Iran at times, according to Elaheh Rostami Povey, women have been forbidden to fill some political office roles because of law or because of judgments made under the Islamic religion. According to Steven Pinker, in a 2001–2007 Gallup poll of 35 nations having 90% of the world's Muslims, "substantial majorities of both sexes in all the major Muslim countries say that women should be allowed to vote without influence from men  and to serve in the highest levels of government." In Rabbinical Judaism, among orthodox leaders, a position, beginning before Israel became a modern state, has been that for women to hold public office in Israel would threaten the state's existence, according to educator Tova Hartman, who reports the view has "wide consensus". When Israel ratified the international women's equality agreement known as CEDAW, according to Marsha Freeman, it reserved nonenforcement for any religious communities that forbid women from sitting on religious courts. According to Freeman, "the tribunals that adjudicate marital issues are by religious law and by custom entirely male." Men's superiority' is a fundamental tenet in Judaism", according to Irit Umanit. According to Freeman, Likud party led "governments have been less than hospitable to women's high level participation." In Buddhism, according to Karma Lekshe Tsomo, some hold that "the Buddha allegedly hesitated to admit women to the Saṅgha  " because their inclusion would hasten the demise of the monastic community and the very teachings of Buddhism itself. "In certain Buddhist countries—Burma, Cambodia, Laos, Sri Lanka, and Thailand—women are categorically denied admission to the Saṅgha, Buddhism's most fundamental institution", according to Tsomo. Tsomo wrote, "throughout history, the support of the Saṅgha has been actively sought as a means of legitimation by those wishing to gain and maintain positions of political power in Buddhist countries." has debated whether women can ever be Hindu nationalist political leaders but without coming to a conclusion, according to Paola Bacchetta. but considers women only as exceptions, the norm for such leadership being men. According to Scalingi, the work is "perhaps the best known analysis of gynecocracy" over men was theological and it was against nature for women to bear rule, superiority, dominion, or empire above any realm, nation, or city. efn|"To promote a woman to beare rule, superioritie, dominion or empire aboue any realme, nation, or citie, is repugnant to nature, contumelie to God, a thing most contrarious to his reueled will and approued ordinance, and finallie it is the subuersion of good order, of all equitie and iustice[.]" According to Maria Zina Gonçalves de Abreu, Knox argued that a woman being a national ruler was unnatural and that women were unfit and ineligible for the post. and that Knox "also attacked those who obeyed or supported female leaders", including men. On whether Knox personally endorsed what he wrote, according to Felch, Jasper Ridley, in 1968, argued that even Knox may not have personally believed his stated position but may have merely pandered to popular sentiment, itself a point disputed by W. Stanford Reid. On the popularity of Knox's views, Patricia Ann Lee said Knox's "fierce attack on the legitimacy of female rule  [was one in which] he said  little that was unacceptable  to most of his contemporaries", although Judith M. Richards disagreed on whether the acceptance was quite so widespread. According to David Laing's Preface to Knox's work, Knox's views were agreed with by some people at the time, the Preface saying, "[Knox's] views were in harmony with those of his colleagues  [Goodman, Whittingham, and Gilby]". Writing in agreement with Knox was Christopher Goodman, who, according to Lee, "considered the woman ruler to be a monster in nature, and used  scriptural argument to prove that females were barred  from any political power", even if, according to Richards, the woman was "virtuous". Some views included conditionality; while John Calvin said, according to Healey, "that government by a woman was a deviation from the original and proper order of nature, and therefore among the punishments humanity incurred for original sin". Nonetheless, Calvin would not always question a woman's right to inherit rule of a realm or principality. Heinrich Bullinger, according to Healey, "held that rule by a woman was contrary to God's law but cautioned against [always] using that reason to oppose such rule". According to Richards, Bullinger said women were normally not to rule. Around 1560, Calvin, in disagreeing with Knox, argued that the existence of the few women who were exceptions showed that theological ground existed for their exceptionalism. Knox's view was much debated in Europe at the time, the issue considered complicated by laws such as on inheritance Knox's view is not said to be widely held in modern Protestantism among leadership or laity.