Episode 3: Matriarchal Leadership with Melinda Cadwallader

Foreign. Welcome to the Matriarchy Times podcast. Here we are going to deep dive into the world of matriarchy and feminism. I'm your host, Farah, and we're joined by Poornima and our guest today, Melinda Cadwallader. So we're here to bring you inspiring conversations with individuals who are making a difference in the fight for gender equality, from activists and scholars to everyday heroes. And our guests are here to share their stories, insights and visions for a more equitable world. So sit back, relax, and join us as we explore the power of matriarchy and the ongoing journey towards true equality. Hi, Melinda.

Hello. Thank you for having me here.

Melinda, can you tell us a bit about yourself to our audience so they can know a bit about you and where you come from?

My name is Melinda Cadwallader. I'm in currently residing in Savannah, Georgia in the United States. And my. My background is really in the beauty industry with trades education, trades licensure. I was an educator at a trades institute and then a director as well. And I have three children, one of whom is kind of what kick started me into the concept of the idea of matriarchy. She I was a single mother for many years, and that was a time when instead of choosing a route of being kind of dependent on systems or people, I really just forged my own way. I had my own job and I supported myself and my child kind of free and independent from what I believe to be a patriarchal lifestyle. And I think when, when she got sick. My daughter was diagnosed with cancer when she was 10. And that was like this challenge of do I still believe that I have everything in myself to be independent of systems and structures and anything that would oppress my choices in raising my child amidst this devastation. And that was what really brought the word matriarchy into my life of like, this is something that I don't know anything about. I hadn't gone to college. I was just a beautician raising with my instincts of mothering. And that's when the word came to me of matriarchy and matriarchal. And when I went back to college, that's when I started researching more into it.

Wow, I'm so sorry to hear about your child. Is she okay now?

Yes, she is actually 24 years old now and she is healthy and vibrant. Yes, she is.

Well, I'm so happy to hear that. And like, I'm really like thrown away by you handling that all by yourself. And that just shows that there is power in matriarchy and women actually can like move forward if they have the willingness, I guess. And so I see that it has led you to do some important work in this field. And your websites and your social media is something that we have gone through a lot, and we see that you talk a lot about matriarchal leadership. And would you mind telling us a bit about your projects and initiatives that you have taken up under this?

Yeah. Yes. So something that I associate with maternal knowing is experience. There are things that I believe, as humans, we just know there's an instinctual sense. In patriarchal systems, that sense is devalued. And there has to be data, there has to be research, there has to be proof in order to really substantiate a claim of a knowing of some kind. And that's where I feel that matriarchal leadership itself is kind of a reimagining of an intelligence that is able to stand on its own. And that's really what the definition of intelligence is, is that it's free from other things and can stand alone to sustain oneself, or it can answer a question on its own without any interference. And so I started thinking about maternal leadership and mothering and how, left to its own devices, it can really support oneself and create a flourishing life of thriving. And. But it really focuses on human flourishing from conception to birth. And beyond that, maternal sense is nurture of the human spirit. And so I really started diving into that with communication studies. Communications is the root of words create worlds, right? So everything is spoken into existence. For it to be something that we can all resonate with and connect with, communication is a connector. And so when we start speaking in language, that actually attunes us to our own human flourishing and attunes us to the flourishing of those around us, whether they're under our care or we are just responsible for them in the workplace, it creates a different culture. And that seems to be the biggest disruption to a patriarchal society, is this attunement to human flourishing, where we actually have to take into consideration the needs of people, the needs of children, the needs of women that are very specific and unique to a society than just a masculine default. So I started researching that in communication studies, and really what education did for me was put names to things that I didn't know were something understanding theories and communication theories and how they make sense of the world, and then realizing that that can help couple with this maternal sense of knowing and provide more language that just expands a connection of information. So I kind of ran with that. I did some leadership studies for many Years, both in my industry and in communication studies. And many leadership theories which are designed for the workplace are masculine default. They were based on studies that were designed for male leaders with a research study of male subjects with interpretations through male researchers. So there really was a lack of, well, what is a feminine leadership and how does that leadership affect a feminine base or a mixed base of masculine and feminine? So really just digging into that and understanding how feminine intelligence is its own thing and it stands alone, just as a masculine intelligence can stand alone on its own thing. But it's really that collaboration between the two within each person that helps create balance. Whether it's your own organism that you're trying to balance sustainability and thriving and flourishing, or it's an ecosystem of people where you are all thriving and flourishing based on your own interpretations of masculine and feminine. I did my master's thesis on creating this leadership theory, not necessarily for a C suite executive or some Fortune 500 company leadership theory. This was something that I wanted to design for everyday people, women just like me who maybe were behind the chair in a salon working, or baristas at a coffee shop or someone working retail. Like leadership had to do with more of an internal self guidance that was free and independent of a belief system or an educational path or a course of study. But really it was balancing this experience within the individual. I did a lot of my base work on Kolb's experiential learning theory. And it's basically the two hemispheres of the brain. You have left brain and right brain thinking, and then you have your front cortex. And it really talks about the difference between watching, doing, feeling, and thinking in those four aspects of our senses are what help us make sense of the world. But it isn't just identifying each of those aspects. It's about moving information through those four quadrants of our own brain so that we can have all the information we need to make the most logical and educated decision for ourselves. That work of experiential learning is actually an adult learning model that's in a lot of different trade schools and industries, schools that are for adult education. It's kind of a basic way of saying we have four different ways that people receive information. It doesn't matter the age demographic, their sex, or even their socioeconomic standing. As long as we put information in these four quadrants, we know that we're reaching these four parts of the brain that every human can at least adapt to or acknowledge and they can grow from. But it became understood through Kolb's experiential Learning that when information travels through all four of those quadrants, that is the most optimal way that people can receive information, process it, and actually do something with it. So that is also the basis of matriarchal leadership, where you can take these four ways of learning and knowing through our senses, the feeling, the thinking, the watching, and the doing, and put them into practice for everyday decisions that we make for ourselves. For example, I mean, I grew up in a very patriarchal home. I didn't really have a lot of critical thinking for myself. I didn't understand my own body. I didn't. I knew that I had a period every month, but I didn't really understand the whole process of what that meant and what it could lead to if I was not operating in responsible ways. So really, when I. I remember when I got married, my husband was like. I would ask him, hey, what's the weather like outside? And he'd say, you know, I could tell you how I feel like the weather is, but you have to experience it for yourself. You need to go out on the patio, you need to decide if it's warm or cold, and whatever you need to do these things. I'm. I can't tell you that. And we used to get in these funny little banters about that, those little tiny things where I kept asking him to tell me how something is, whether it was like a certain food or a movie or a book. What did you think about that? Did you like it? And, I mean, that's. It's one thing if you're experiencing it and you just want to share information and you guys want to talk about something. But I was asking from a place of, tell me if we should do this based on your experience. And that became such a default to me in my own life that even putting myself through an experience for my own understanding and then coming to my own conclusion was nothing short of a revolution for myself. And that was even in my 30s. So those little concepts of having an actual process to put information through so that women younger and younger and younger can start thinking for themselves, not having to be dependent or reach for these systems and structures that were never designed to benefit them in the first place.

That'S such a different way of thinking. I've never thought about it like that. It's like. So you're saying that the way that patriarchy, patriarchal social structures are giving us information is actually limiting the capabilities of women? Is that what you mean?

I do believe that to an extent. Most of our systems are designed by men and for men it was even just a couple decades ago that women were allowed to receive an education. And when you think about how long that women had to rely on and be dependent of, whether it was their fathers or their spouses or even their brothers, if their father had passed away, it was a. It was generation after generation of depending on a patriarchal point of view, which was head of house, head of state, state to make decisions and to give logic and reason. The. The great I call the matriarch of feminism, Mary Wollstonecraft, she used to talk about the fact that women were just the idol of the senses. They were. Women were the idols of men's sense making. So if women looked good to them or spoke well, they were well speaking. If they looked good, then that was the source of beauty. Women were idols of it. They weren' really expected to make sense of things for themselves. And she wrote that in the 1800s, and I think it's still true today, that if we are not actively putting information, our feelings, our thoughts and intellect, our practice, working with our hands, trying it out, experimenting and then making it our own, we're really not coming to our own conclusion. We're really not having a voice that isn't already regurgitated from some system and some model that came before us.

Okay, so in that aspect, do you think that our education system, like, what kind of changes do you think should be done to education to accommodate this new way of thinking? I think that the education system we have now is very structured in a way that you meant, like we are waiting for someone else to tell us how to think. So do you have you? I don't know. I'm not really up to date on how education has changed in the past few years. But do you think that there are any positive changes, like, from your knowledge?

I'm not sure if there's been. I think the positive changes are the fact that it's more accessible now, and that's a huge success. However, there is a lot of research. One of my favorite research articles is called Mind the Patriarchy by Adisa. And she describes how a lot of educational systems, women originally were teachers and the men were the administrators and the superintendents and the school board directors. And so you had this system of patriarchy in education for many years where the curriculum was not designed by the teachers, the teachers were just the wonderful women who taught the information, but it really was sourced patriarchally. And so once women began growing in their own education and in their own leadership capabilities, then you had more women on school boards and more Women in administrative. And that became a light shining in those areas of, wait a minute, this isn't accurate, or this has a sexist perspective. We need to change these things. I mean, that's what feminism does. It really just points to and highlights the discrepancies and the sexism and misogyny so that we can do better and course correct, whether it was based on intention or ignorance. That's what feminism does. It shines a light. And so the more that these changes needed to be made, I feel like it's almost doubled down, especially for public education, that there is more of a patriarchal protection of education. And that has caused a lot of division through public and private education. I think that's created a lot of distrust, at least in the United States, for a distrust of public education. And I think that's intentional. It's almost like, well, we understand we've been indoctrinating you with these different educational systems and beliefs of history that were never accurate accounts of history, or at least they didn't tell the full story. Right. But once you start opening it up and kind of shining the light where the light was not meant to shine, then if you, at least if you create a distrust in the whole thing, then it can kind of be pushed away and swept away anyways without there being accountability or responsibility to make amends. So I feel like it's both. It's, yes, we have more access, but again, the more, you know, the more you see, yeah, this was bad. Yeah.

All right. So if you move on. So we were, we saw some of your work being centered around women embracing their femininity more. So do you know, like, what are the real dangers you think that women face from not fully embracing their feminine energy under patriarchal society? Like, I think that from what you mentioned, like education, educating themselves under patriarchy also kind of limits the kind of formation of, how do you call it, like using their feminine energy or being in tune with their feminine energy. So what, what can really happen? Like, what is the long term dangers that women face if they are being limited, constantly limited and controlled?

I think it's, we'll just continue to see young women either skip the route of education and never really learn the critical thinking skills and become either pets or prey is what I call it. So you're either a pet in the sense of your one desire is to be a wife and to be home. And that's. These are all wonderful things. But when you do that in the sense where you have nothing to sustain yourself individually, then you do Become a pet, you have to be cared for. There needs to be someone who's providing for you. And that is a dependent stage. So in some sense, too, this has nothing to do, I think, with gender sometimes, because it is the masculine, it is the feminine, and every human has a mix of both of those within them. So it's that sense of being a pet where you are dependent upon someone or something else. But then there's also the realm of being prey, where because you're not informed on whether it's your own body or your own thinking, your cognitive skills, that you become gullible or naive or susceptible to manipulation. And then when you are in that category of prey, that's where contractual elements come into play that can bind a woman as well to either a marriage or a partnership or a job or any kind of managerial governance over her. So those become predatory environments. And I think it comes down to education. If there is an unwanted pregnancy and you've ruled out opportunity for abortion or any kind of care in that sense of choice, then you are dependent. If you're not married, you are raising a child on your own, and the government gets to say how much you'll be able to thrive and flourish as a solo parent based on their own economic structures. But I think it really just comes down to being under the care, maybe never actualizing their own full potential, which is unfortunate. I mean, who doesn't want that for their child? That you bring life into the earth and you're like, I want them to flourish, I want them to thrive. I want them to have live their fullest life. And I don't think that women have been given that full opportunity since birth. Birth because of social roles and gender roles and lack of access to education.

Okay, so just something that I was thinking about from what you said. Okay, so matriarchal leadership, feminine energy. So what we know about leaders and about, you know, being in control, Maybe someone who's trying to make it on their own, a woman trying to get forward in life. How and where is the boundary of it being patriarchal energy and matriarchal energy? Like, to be a matriarchal leader, don't you have to be kind of patriarchal? Or is there some strength in feminine energy that we can draw upon to be a better, maybe a more evolved leader than a patriarchal leader? I don't know if that makes sense, but I think you understood what I'm trying to ask.

Yeah, I do. Like, I feel the sense that it's. That it's a feminine nature. In the fact that it can be a female energy. However, I do feel like the, the nature that is matriarchal is universal. If you think about when a woman is pregnant and she doesn't know what, whether she's having a boy or a girl, there's no, there's no sex or gender construct happening. The only interest is to flourish, is to make sure that you're educated so that this life inside of you is having its nutrients, it's getting the vitamins it needs, it's getting all of the care that it needs, that your emotions are regulated and you're not creating high stress environment for this life, that you're also moving your body and your body is capable and flourishing enough that it's able to give birth and then also the opportunity of creating an environment for that new life to flourish. And I feel like that is kind of the sense of matriarchal leadership where it's, it's kind of reimagined as this internal leadership that it doesn't matter what's going on with this energy or life. It could be a business, your business, babies, what they call them, right? Or it could be an actual life, or it could be you're a mentor for people, or you're a manager, a leader, a director at an organization. Whatever life you are responsible for, you are carrying yourself through those four modes of experiential learning so that you're caring for people, so that you are attuned to flourishing of people. And it has nothing to do with patriarchal. It's really just what does that person, person need? What does this life energy need? How am I accommodating and caring for that and am I doing the same for myself? So in this sense it can be more reimagined where it's not so much a social system at this time, but it has to start with each person individually, where we are managing ourselves, that we're self governing ourselves into more egalitarian ways for our own lives. But then also that's how we're leading people. That's how we're leading in our home, that's how we're leading at work, that's how we're leading through the work that we do and any influence that we have.

So what kind of dangers and challenges do you think that a matriarchal leader will have in trying to face up and compete with patriarchal structured leaders? Like, because we are not in the matriarchy, sorry, because we're not in a matriarchy right now, but we are still trying to promote matriarchal leadership. So while the patriarchal energy and techniques and societal structures are still strong, do you think that a matriarchal leadership can survive long term without having all the forceful effects of patriarchal leadership?

I think it can. Because for me, going to college and really having this theoretical layout of what matriarchal leadership could be, it was based upon four pillars of leadership that are really universal. It had nothing to do with male or female energy either. It's thinking strategically for your intellect, it's being, having the values driven, which is universal as well. For your feeling center for the practicality, it was not adaptive leadership, but appreciative leadership where we're always looking for the positive in the, in the situation so that we can focus on the positive. And then there's adaptive leadership, which is the fourth pillar. And that is this sense of being able to recalibrate and adapt. And all four of those leadership theories stand on their own. They have each of their own textbook. But what I'm trying to put together and organize is how those four leadership styles, when they come together, they create an experience, experiential leadership, where you're actually taking into consideration feeling and emotion and value, thought, intellect and strategy, appreciation of people and groups, and intersectional connectivity. And then you're also learning how to adapt and grow and develop and advance people. So if we're putting these leadership concepts together, then we're operating in a flow that keeps people moving forward. And that in itself is not subject to gender, it's not subject to age, it's not even a based on class or race. It's kind of outside of the bounds. It's bigger than that. It's more universal, that it kind of encompasses to me this concept of life. We can say the same things when we don't know the gender of what we're carrying. But everyone knows, okay, hey, you're pregnant, you're going to bring life into this earth. We, we hope that you're well and healthy and that you're emotionally sound and that you have all the resources you need to bring this life in. That is a universal gift that humans give each other. But all of a sudden, when we have a gender attached, then all of a sudden things shift and then all of a sudden these expectations come into play and these rules and regulations and this kind of takes that out of the equation of let's care for human life in all the things that we do. And if we have these four leadership theories that were patriarchal in their formation, but if we put them together, they represent a whole circular matriarchal concept of human flourishing.

Yeah, I think I see what you mean. Like, from what I understand, like, example, you mentioned something adaptive leadership. So I feel like matriarchal leader would be more adaptive to situations than a patriarchal leader, because patriarchal leaders kind of want to force their way, their opinions, like how they want things done. It doesn't matter about the individual's capabilities or where they come from or what they're feeling at the time. You just have to do what you're doing. So I think an adaptive leader is more matriarchal than patriarchal. So something like that.

Absolutely, absolutely. And I did research on adaptive leadership because it's one of the pillars of matriarchal leadership. But when I read through the theory, I was like, it was written by three men. You know, they're all PhDs or whatever. And I'm like, you literally wrote how a woman goes through a life every month. Like, we. We're. We're cyclical. We adapt, we change. We go through these highs and lows with our emotion and our hormones throughout all of our changes throughout life, from, you know, adolescence until the grave. We're constantly going through these cycles. And you've just written a leadership theory that basically says how to be adaptable. Like, we know you're not teaching us anything here except you're taking credit for what we've been doing and knowing within us for so long. So there's a lot of that with this theory of, like, what you have built your life upon, building in the theory of. Of business and human social development. We've been living and knowing for many, many, many years. And now let's put it into a form and a shape and a language that we can talk about that doesn't just say, oh, yes, I'm an adaptable leader. Well, yes, that's. That's part of it. But that's not. That's not matriarchal because we don't base our entire existence upon that because we're adaptable. And I do really relate it to the difference between a value, between birth, the birth process, and military. You have all these awards, you have all this accolades, and you have all these even government simulations. When you give your life in service, of combat and of war and of fighting and defense and security, and that's such a valorized thing. When really, when you look at a woman's existence and how what her body needs to do to give birth to just one child, it's the equivalent of running 40 marathons. And there's no award. There's no, like, hey, thank you for bringing another human into our economy. You know, even just that is not, like, can we at least get dental care for the rest of our life because we gave birth to one child? Like, please, can we do something? And it's just not valued. So one of the biggest purposes to. In creating this leadership theory is to increase the value of maternal responsibility of this. The reproductive biology that we have been gifted. That not necessarily means we have children or we give birth, but it's still an essence of who we are. And it impacts and influences every decision we make. And when there's no value in that, then that's a patriarchal society. And then we get into sexism, and then we get into misogyny because the value for maternal leadership is so low. So the part. Part of my hope here is to just keep increasing the value, because if there's no value, then no one is really cheering it on. And then it doesn't get the support it needs. It doesn't grow, it doesn't get funded. So if we increase the value, then we are making more of a statement of this is important.

Yeah. Right now, like, the popularized concept is a child is just another mouth to feed. So that needs to change. Like, people don't place value on life now like they used to. Like, it's just overpopulation, all these things. But I think with a widespread message, this can change. So how difficult do you think it will be, like, to get people to change their minds about everything? Because there is so much to change, and for us to move to matriarchy, we have a lot of things that we need to change. So what do you expect? Like, what kind of difficulty do you think that you face? And do you think that we'll ever get out of this? Do you think there's hope?

I will be honest. In a predominantly white culture, I think it's extremely difficult. I think that's where a lot of patriarchal roots are, in white supremacy. And that is a responsibility of white women to really resist that and to unsubscribe from that way of thinking and that way of living. And that, I think, is the biggest hurdle, because I even. I've done a little bit of research and poking around and talking in different groups of women, and when I say the word matriarchal, and I'm. Let's say I'm applying it to this woman started a nonprofit, and it was for young black girls in her community to not only become better readers, but to also learn how to write and write their own stories at really young ages. And I said, wow, that is so matriarchal. That is such a matriarchal concept you're doing. And so I throw that word around to really kind of do some social listening and see, like, what kind of response I'm going to get. And in multicultural communities, it's like, yes, girl, it is. Thank you. I know, like, that's the response I get when I say that same language in a culture of even like predominantly white, even feminist, white feminist circles, it's like, okay, wait a minute, we're not talking about matriarchy. That's not the answer. Blah, blah, blah. And it's really resistant it. And I'm like, listen, I said matriarchal. It's an adverb, it's an adjective. It's describing a way of doing something. And even that is just really resistant. And I, and I do get a lot of rejection of that. So I think really just rallying women from other countries and other nations and from other cultures and other ethnicities, I think that's where I want to spend my time. I mean, I only have the influence that I have. And so I want to be running alongside women who really believe this and believe it's possible, instead of spending my time fighting against the women who don't or who are resistant to it. Like, maybe you'll figure it out in another 20 years, but from now on, I really just want to be with the women who are championing this concept of matriarchy or whether that's starting internally and working out systemically. Great. But any other way than that, it's just not going to steal my energy anymore.

So that's so what we try to do, like at matriarchy times, what we are trying to do is actually try and convert people. Like show them what matriarch is about, tell them about it, tell them about all the concepts and try to get people on board. So from what you say, that's difficult. So what I hope is now we can focus more on strengthening the belief of people who are halfway there, rather than targeting the people who are not there.

Yes, absolutely. And I feel like that's where in writing this theory, I'm using a lot of personal stories. I have research, it's very academic based, but it's also this place of walking through the decisions that we made while we were living in the hospital and my child was battling cancer. Like how simple it can be applied internally to your own life that can influence the way that you lead an organization, the way that you lead at your workplace, the way that you change your language to become more matriarchal in the way that you use words to further things that are beneficial to people and to protect people. So it is that building of this concept that can be more understood, to be more welcomed and perceived when it has been resisted. That is definitely the work.

Yeah. Oh, my God. You gave us so much good information and insights today. Do you have any final messages for our audience? Like, is there anything you want to tell? Because we have a good audience that is on the verge of, you know, believing in matriarchy. So is there anything that you want to say?

I think I just. I'm just thankful to have met you all and to continue to meet.