How is matriliny different from matriarchy?

In anthropology, matriliny and matriarchy are distinct concepts that are often conflated due to historical misconceptions.

Matriliny refers to a kinship system in which ancestral descent is traced through the mother’s line rather than the father’s. It is a structural method of organizing family lineage and inheritance, where individuals are related through female ancestors. Matriliny does not inherently dictate the distribution of political or domestic power.1234

Matriarchy, by contrast, is a hypothetical social system in which women hold absolute authority over the family and the community. While some 19th-century scholars theorized that matriarchies were a universal, early stage of human evolution, modern anthropologists and sociologists agree that such societies have never existed in that sense.5

The confusion often stems from outdated evolutionary theories that assumed if a society was not patrilineal (and thus patriarchal), it must be the inverse. However, research shows that even in matrilineal societies, male authority often persists through roles such as brothers and uncles, and female dominance does not automatically replace male dominance.154