What is the opposite of Patriarchy?

What is the opposite of Patriarchy? This would make a good exam question wouldn’t it?

With an immediate FAIL for everyone whose answer is Matriarchy.

Matriarchy isn’t the opposite of Patriarchy - and it certainly isn’t the answer to the gender inequality issue. It is more a mirror reflection of it, reversing the image but essentially repeating it. Because if we did replace today’s patriarchal society with a matriarchal one (as many extremely frustrated women - and even some despairing men - believe we should), we would simply replace one dominant culture with another. We would just replace all of the blind spots and misses and mistakes that are inevitable in a world run by men that doesn’t represent women, with a new women-run world of blind spots and misses and mistakes.

So the true opposite of Patriarchy isn’t Matriarchy - it' s Diversity. Only Diversity will bring us a different result. Only the representation of all genders (and all people) will save us from the incomplete discussions and the bad decisions that groups of people who are too similar (in any way) have and make.

And if we could all just focus on this we could perhaps, finally, make some actual progress. We certainly won’t with the too prevalent - and extremely binary - men vs women, patriarchy vs matriarchy, win vs lose gender battles.

Rant over - for today.