Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- noun Government by women.
- noun A society ruled by women.
from The Century Dictionary.
- noun Government by a woman or by women; female power or rule.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- noun Government by a woman, female power; gyneocracy.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun A
society ruled bywomen .
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- noun a political system governed by a woman
Etymologies
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
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Examples
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He loved to talk to her about pornographic acts: sex with prepubescent girls and animals; nightmarish sadism; masochism; gynecocracy; enema torture.
Kiss the Girls Patterson, James, 1947- 1995
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On broad lines, then, we have among the Germans the following phases: vestiges of gynecocracy; equal rights; androcracy; commencement of equality.
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If we are to credit the account given by Nymphodorus, at the outset of the historical epoch men were dominant in Egypt, for he tells us that in that land the introduction of gynecocracy was attributed to King Sesostris.
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Reitzenstein says that in Khyria gynecocracy was associated with matriarchy, so that here the chief priestess was at the same time the supreme political authority.
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Thus there was an oscillation from androcracy to gynecocracy and back to androcracy again.
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The explanations that have hitherto been offered to account for the transition from gynecocracy to androcracy have invariably been biased by the ideology of the extant Men's State.
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By the time of Aristophanes, the remembrance that women had once held sway in Athens was so utterly extinct that the dramatist assures us in his Ecclesiazusoe, (The Parliament of Women) that gynecocracy was the only "cracy" which Athens had never known.
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That is why the translators have seldom used the terms matriarchy and patriarchy; and for this and other reasons they have passed over Bachofen's terms "androcracy" and "gynecocracy" in favour of Anglo-Saxon equivalents with somewhat different implications.
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Androcracy no less than gynecocracy has graven the furrows of care on the brow of mankind.
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Descent in the female line, not uncommonly found among primitive peoples, undoubtedly tended to place women in a position of great influence; but it by no means necessarily involved any gynecocracy, or rule of women, and such rule is merely a hypothesis which by some enthusiasts has been carried to absurd lengths.
Essays in War-Time Further Studies in the Task of Social Hygiene Havelock Ellis 1899
qms commented on the word gynecocracy
I found the term "ewe flock," you see,
And wonder if there's hypocrisy
If I were to say
On world women's day
That here we have gynecocracy?
See comments at settle.
March 8, 2015
Logophile77 commented on the word gynecocracy
Has "coc" (cock) in it. Thus I prefer gynocracy.
January 10, 2018