Magical Matriarchies [Fantasy]

[AlexanderHowl]

So, imagine that you have a fantasy world where 80% of the people born with Magery are female and 20% are male. In this world, magic functions similar to RPM and an average of 1% of the population has Magery (1.6% of the female population and 0.4% of the male population). Magery starts at 0, but practitioners can improve it, and develop Ritual Adept, through studying Thaumotology and developing the elemental Paths (Air, Dark, Earth, Fire, Metal, Light, Spirit, Void, Water, and Wood).

The elemental Paths include conceptual as well as material aspects and produce mental effects as well as physical effects. The possible effects are Control, Create, Destroy, Restore, Sense, Strengthen, and Transform. Mental effects are lesser effects while physical effects are greater effects.

What would be the impact of sexual disparities in magical populations? What would you do with such a setting? What would you add to the settings?

[Varyon]

Hmmm... this would set magic being fairly common compared to most settings with it, but I think I'd need a better idea of what mental effects the elements would have before I could go further (physical effects being Greater means they'll likely be far less influential... except for maybe Wood, as I assume that can be used to enhance crop growth).

[Shostak]

Just because there are more females with magical abilities than males does not necessarily lead to a matriarchal society. After all, men's scarcity could just as well make them more highly esteemed and powerful than seen as subordinate to women. Now, if Greater Effects or certain paths or effects were exclusive to females then perhaps there is more certainty of matriarchy within the mage community. Either way, though, the conclusion to have the population disparity lead to matriarchy would follow from your vision for the world more than anything else.

[AlexanderHowl]

While the general society may not be matriarchal, magical society probably will be because of the 4:1 ratio of women to men, thus the name magical matriarchies, magical societies dominated by women.

[The Colonel]

IIRC there's a series of fantasy novels where the magic users are all female which may help you. Not sure what it's called but I recall someone telling me about it at length … apparently the fluff behind it is that whilst men can actually use magic, some historical BBEG poisoned the well so that they go mad if they do.

[AlexanderHowl]

Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time, which possesses a system more like Sorcery than RPM. The Aes Sidai are the mages of the setting and are rare rather than uncommon.

[ericthered]

Originally Posted by The Colonel

IIRC there's a series of fantasy novels where the magic users are all female which may help you. Not sure what it's called but I recall someone telling me about it at length … apparently the fluff behind it is that whilst men can actually use magic, some historical BBEG poisoned the well so that they go mad if they do.

That would be Robert Jordan's "The Wheel of Time". "At Length" is the correct description for the series. Its 14 books long. Or 4 million words, or 11,000 pages, depending on how you like to count such things. It elevates the position of women generally, but not by much. It does make the magical society very female-dominated though.

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It has been my observation that society is ruled by those skilled in leadership and politics, regardless of what actually makes the society powerful. Engineers don't rule the modern world. Soldiers don't rule it either. Even warrior kings and military dictators rule through military leadership, not through personal prowess. I don't think that adding magic to a world will make it so that mages will rule.

On the other hand, your setup will improve the status and lot of at least some women compared to history. Economic and military power tends to result in the wealth and influence of those who generate it. Life will be a little more egalitarian. How deep this effect extends is probably culturally and world-specific. Will that 1 in 60 women leverage her abilities to aid other women, or is her immediate family and career more important? Just how well does power trickle down in that situation?

[Varyon]

Originally Posted by ericthered

It has been my observation that society is ruled by those skilled in leadership and politics, regardless of what actually makes the society powerful. Engineers don't rule the modern world. Soldiers don't rule it either. Even warrior kings and military dictators rule through military leadership, not through personal prowess. I don't think that adding magic to a world will make it so that mages will rule.

Early on, individual skill at hunting and driving off enemies was highly useful for keeping one's tribe alive, so the most skilled tended to become leaders due to the respect given to them. After many generations of this, the idea males were more suited to rule than females (due to hunters/warriors being predominantly male, on account of sexual dimorphism favoring males in terms of strength and perhaps stamina) became deeply ingrained in tradition, creating a self-perpetuating cycle where men were higher status than women (after all, if you have the preconception that men are better at leadership than women, the men are the ones you're going to train for leadership).

So, in addition to dependence on exactly what one can do with this sort of magic, there's dependence on exactly what happened early on. If women leveraged their magic to improve their abilities to provide food and protect the tribe, there could be a stronger tradition of female leaders - although with the fact men can also be mages, just are so less frequently, you may have them becoming leaders just as readily - perhaps more readily if they tend to be equally powerful with magic, as "mage who can fight without magic assistance" may be more respected than "mage who requires magic assistance." At the very least, I'd expect women - or at least those with magic - to become more respected than women in our own history (and if magic doesn't appear until a certain age, those girls beneath that age may be more cherished than girls of such ages in our own history, as there's the chance they'll grow up to be excellent providers for the tribe).

Of course, if magic didn't appear until some time later, there's always the risk of it making women's lots worse, with "witches" being executed or forced into servitude of powerful men.

[Dalin]

Human cultures have been varied enough that you can handwave this in any direction you want. (It would take a pretty hardcore determinist to argue that society could only turn out one particular way.)

With that said, it would be plausible that a social order would develop where women (particularly mages) would have a higher status than men. This might result in areas of magic becoming gendered such that some elemental paths would be reserved for women and others, potentially, for men. (I don't know the RPM system very well, so maybe this would apply to effects too? I'm not sure.) This would be analogous to the way sexist and racist social structures historically developed in the United States, for example, where aptitude alone wasn't typically enough to overcome socially imposed barriers.

[naloth]

It would depend on how common mages are relative to the rest of the population, how powerful mages tend to be, and what kind of magic was available.

WoT is a good example of a fairly rare, dangerous talent that requires quite a bit of training to use properly (for thousands of years, that changes drastically at during the series).

If half of women (and every 1 in 10 men) had low level abilities, I suspect they would corner a few markets but there would be enough mages that they wouldn't be special.