“These facts have led to the supposition that in primitive times a veritable reign of women existed: the matriarchy. It was this hypothesis, proposed by Bachofen, that Engels adopted, regarding the passage f r om the matriarchate to the patriarchate as 'the great historical defeat of the feminine sex'. But in truth that Golden Age of Woman is only a myth. To say that woman was the Other is to say that there did not exist between the sexes a reciprocal relation: Earth, Mother, Goddess—she was no fellow creature in man's eyes; it was beyond the human realm that her power was afiirmed, and she was therefore outside of that realm. Society has always been male ; political power has always been in the hands of men. 'Pubhc or simply social authority always belongs to men,' declares Lévi-Strauss at the end of his study of primitive societies.”