Creature Culture (part 4)

In this series, I've gone through a number of the issues involved with making invented cultures function realistically.  However, with all of this working through the minutia, I've skipped over an interesting basic question: how do you create a Fantasy social structure that is controlled by women?  Unfortunately, drawing from human history (as far as I know) leaves us with a blank.  Modern life has redefined gender roles in humans for a variety of reasons, mostly related to technology.  It is important to forget modern life when designing a culture in an entirely different setting.  I know it sounds obvious, but my goal in creating a character/culture is to make it fit within the world it lives.  Within our Fantasy worlds we have the freedom to work with biology and natural history (as is my general preference) to create just such an culture. 
    There are no reasonable arguments as to why men have held a dominant role in shaping human culture apart from physical traits.  As with all animals, male and female roles are generally defined by what works best given the tools at hand.  It is in no way provable that men are smarter or wiser than women (as much as men have tried to say otherwise).  However, there do tend to be general differences between the genders beyond our sexual organs (though they are important as well).  Consequently, in a Fantasy setting based on the Medieval period, to create a female dominated society, we must alter the physical.
    Human men generally have greater physical strength than their female counterparts (yes, there are always exceptions).  In the natural world, this generally translates into a greater ability to fend off or kill predators as well as prey animals.  For humans it also makes men more able to construct shelters, carry wood to build fires, till fields and so on.  There is nothing to say that women can't do this, or didn't do it, simply that men seem to be built for it.  A simple method to make females dominant would be to make them larger than the males (like the Amazons).  There are certainly plenty of examples of this in the natural world.  Many species of bird have larger females and we all love those praying mantis ladies.  Physical strength is not the whole story in the evolution of gender roles, but it's a good starting place.     
    While on the subject of power, I'd like to address the use of magic as a game-changer.  If this power were only available to ladies it would certainly alter the social structure.  It's within your rights as creator, I just don't know that I would want to grant exclusive power of this type without a balance on the other side.  Nature doesn't really work that way.  Perhaps ladies are better at it (or some aspect of it) because of something inherently feminine.  Maybe there are social prohibitions that have grown up around the use by men because of some ugly history.  How magic could impact gender relations over history is a little too big to go much deeper today, so we'll just leave it here.
    One of the arguments as to why men have dominated human history is reproduction.  The physical strain placed upon a female human to carry a child is enormous.  While a woman can continue to work when pregnant (I'll never forget reading The Good Earth), it is limiting.  Childbirth is dangerous for both the mother and child.  To reduce these risks could lessen the female's dependance on the male for protection at these times and allow women to become ascendant.  There are multiple reproduction plans which could encourage this.  By laying eggs, females are not burdened by carrying the gestating fetuses.  Danger to the offspring is usually offset by multiple eggs and the eggs are often guarded by both parents.  Multiple smaller offspring is a viable alternative.  There could even be some kind of multi-stage development, like certain insects or amphibians (though they also start as eggs).  If you remove the reliance of the female on the male for protection while propagating the species, you allow for all sorts of social restructuring. 
    Child rearing is another physical reason that women have held a support role.  After giving birth, the human female's role (like that of many animals) is not over in relation to her children.  Milk produced by the mother (which starts as a result of producing the offspring) is the healthiest thing out there for the kids.  From my limited exposure to young 'uns, I've seen that the little ones feed all the time and at all hours.  Consequently, they need to be with mom until they can start to feed on another source.  Yes, wet nurses were sometimes used by rich ladies (before formula).  Yes, we now drink the milk of other animals, but that certainly wasn't entirely safe before pasteurization. Having little ones is a beautiful thing, but it slows the ladies down.  Young that can take care of themselves right off the bat could alleviate this (though if you remove lactation, do the ladies still have boobs?).  Human children are just too dependent on mother in the early stages, making mothers again require male protection.
    Human reproduction comes out roughly 50/50 men/women (yes, I know there are more women than men).  As an evolutionary development, it seems effective.  If two offspring survive, it's likely that they can make more.  Now, lets say that we skew this one way or the other.  How would that change things?  If there were ten times the number of women, would they band together to protect the males?  If there were ten times the number of men, would the women be able to pick and choose?  I find the second option likely to be worse for women, but you might be able to work something out (I'd be interested to read it).  I'm not sure if the queen of an ant colony is the boss or the servant of all (though some would argue that this is the case for all good governments).
    The goal of every species is to perpetuate itself.  When you look at humans from this evolutionary standpoint, you see that the ladies do most of the perpetuating.  If children are literally the point of existence, then men primarily function as enablers (and carriers of genetic material).  The purpose of the family group is to protect and educate the young so that they can later produce subsequent generations.  The position of the woman in Medieval society was an outgrowth of this evolutionary imperative, but in your Fantasy world, it needn't be the same.  Many of the suggestions I've made in this post would definitely change what it means to be "human," but then I never said I was helping you design humans and you never said that your humans were from Earth.  You can apply these ideas to any or all of the creations that populate your world, but always remember that when you start altering your ladies physically, you will alter them psychologically as well (and the guys in response).