Matrilineality
Mosuo families tend to trace their lineage through the female side of the family. Occasionally, in fact, they may not know who the father of a child is, which does not carry stigma as in many other societies. An important historical fact often missed in studies of the Mosuo was that their social organization has traditionally been feudal, with a small nobility controlling a larger peasant population. The Mosuo nobility practiced a "parallel line of descent" that encouraged cohabitation, usually within the nobility, in which the father passed his social status to his sons, while the women passed their status to their daughters. Thus, if a Mosuo commoner female married a male serf, her daughter would be another commoner, while her son would have serf status.
Hua (2001) has theorized that the matriarchal system of the Mosuo lower classes was enforced by the nobility to neutralize threats to their power. Since leadership was inherited through the male family line, potential threats to leadership from the peasant class were eliminated by tracing the lineage of the latter through the female line. Thus, depicting Mosuo culture as an idealized “matriarchal” culture with more freedom than patriarchal societies and with special rights for women, are unfounded. In actuality, the Mosuo peasant class has historically been subjugated and “sometimes treated as little better than slaves.”
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