Johann Jakob Bachofen

Johann Jakob Bachofen appears in The Second Sex as the originator of a consequential theory about women’s place in early society: the hypothesis that a period of female rule preceded patriarchy. The book recognizes the theory’s influence, including its adoption by Friedrich Engels, but disputes the golden-age account it seems to offer. A history in which women possess sacred power or symbolic importance, it argues, is not necessarily a history in which they act as men’s equals or exercise political authority.

The Hypothesis of an Earlier Female Reign

Bachofen’s argument enters the book through the interpretation of myths and traditions that preserve traces of women’s elevated status. Figures such as Niobe and Medea evoke a time when mothers could regard children as their own, while Andromache and Hecuba have an importance in Homeric poetry not afforded to women secluded in classical Greek domestic life. Such material supports the supposition that a reign of women once existed. The book identifies Bachofen as the proponent of this hypothesis and notes that Engels adopted it, interpreting the passage from matriarchy to patriarchy as the great historical defeat of women.

The hypothesis gives a historical shape to the question of women’s subordination: rather than treating male authority as the only imaginable social arrangement, it proposes that the balance between the sexes changed. Yet the book distinguishes evidence of women’s prominence from evidence that they once possessed political sovereignty. The survival of powerful female figures in myth and poetry can suggest a memory of social change without proving that women governed society as men’s peers.

Sacred Power and Political Authority

The book’s central objection is that female power in early societies may have been conceived as supernatural rather than human and political. Women could be surrounded by taboos, treated as magicians or sorceresses, included in prayers, or serve as priestesses; in some cases, they participated in governing a tribe or ruled it. But sacred status does not itself establish reciprocity between women and men. A woman regarded as Earth, Mother, or Goddess may be exalted precisely as an exceptional, otherworldly force, rather than recognized as an equal subject within society.

Against the idea of a former golden age, the book maintains that political and social authority belonged to men. It argues that relations of reciprocity were established between men, with women functioning as possessions or as the means through which masculine groups related to one another. On this account, women’s importance in ritual, mythology, or kinship does not demonstrate that they formed an autonomous group capable of asserting itself before men. Bachofen’s proposed transition therefore cannot, by itself, establish that women once held a position of equality that patriarchy subsequently took away.

Lineage and the Limits of the Theory

The discussion further separates systems of descent from women’s concrete social condition. Whether a society is patrilineal, matrilineal, bilateral, or described as undifferentiated, the book argues, women remain under male guardianship; the relevant authority may belong to a father or older brother, or pass to a husband. Matrilineal descent does not necessarily mean that women themselves control lineage or law: authority can still operate through a woman’s father or brother and extend into her husband’s community. Kinship arrangements organized through women, in this analysis, may define relationships between masculine groups rather than relations of equality between the sexes.

The book also cautions against turning descent systems into a simple ranking of societies. It notes that some patrilineal civilizations remained technically undeveloped and that others regressed, so paternal descent alone does not establish a universal hierarchy of social progress. Its narrower observation is that the societies with paternal right had, in its account, advanced further technically and ideologically. This qualification reinforces the book’s distinction between an account of social development and a claim that one form of descent automatically secures women’s freedom.

Reception and Historical Significance

Elsewhere, the book sharply judges Bachofen’s writings as speculative and notes that sociology no longer gives them credence. This dismissal coexists with the attention given to his hypothesis: his theory supplies a recognizable interpretation of the evidence for women’s past status and offers a dramatic name for the shift to patriarchy. The book’s response is not to deny that women could have held significant ritual or symbolic positions, but to question whether those positions amounted to political power or mutual recognition.

Bachofen thus serves as both a historical reference and a foil. The proposed female reign challenges the assumption that women’s subordination is timeless, while the book’s rebuttal warns against mistaking sacred elevation for social equality. Its broader argument is that what appears natural or absolute in women’s position must be examined through the institutions and relations that produce it, rather than explained by a presumed lost age of female rule.