When God Was a Woman

In Chapter 3, Stone explores how goddess worship influenced the status of women in ancient societies. Stone argues that understanding this relationship requires moving beyond simple cause-and-effect reasoning to explore the complex connections between religious beliefs, kinship systems, and social structures.

Stone presents several scholarly theories about the relationship between deity gender and social power. German scholars M. and M. Vaerting proposed that the dominant sex in society determines the sex of the primary deity, while Sir James Frazer suggested that women’s high social status led to goddess veneration. Robertson Smith connected deity choice to family kinship systems, arguing that the gender of the head of the family influenced the gender of the supreme deity. Stone notes that these theories consistently link goddess worship to matrilineal descent systems, in which inheritance passes through the female line.

Stone distinguishes between matrilineality (inheritance through women) and matriarchy (women holding political power), explaining that matrilineal societies often granted women significant economic and social advantages even when men held formal authority. She cites sociologist V. Klein’s argument that in early agricultural societies, women controlled major sources of wealth as house owners and food producers, making men economically dependent on them.