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I come from women in South India who had wealth. My family consists of several generations Nair caste matrilineal household was called Palayil Tharavad. A tharavad is literally a house built on a thara: a raised base of laterite and stone raised above the monsoon waters.
But the word never meant just the building itself. It means that the family is also rooted there: house and relatives, land and lineage. And in my family, women held that place. The boys were sent to serve the royal family and to be trained as soldiers, so the Tharavad became the domain of women.
For centuries in our communities in South India, the Tharavads were passed down through daughters, not sons. Among Marumakkathayam, meaning “children of the sister,” lineage ran through women; The house and property belonged to the female line.
For centuries in our communities in South India, the Tharavads were passed down through daughters, not sons. Among Marumakkathayam, meaning “children of the sister,” lineage ran through women; The house and property belonged to the female line. It is an example of a parallel economy and society in which women have accumulated and controlled wealth behind formal economic systems for centuries.
My great-grandmother’s Tharavad was led by the eldest female relative, the Tharavad Amma. In my family, this woman was the mother of my great-grandmother, Palayil Kalyani. She took the name of her Tharavad, not her husband’s name. Kalyani translates as “beautiful,” but her authority was far greater. She negotiated with local traders about the growth of their farms and was consulted on all important decisions affecting the family. A new romantic partner, naming a child, running the household – all required the blessings of Palayil Kalyani.
In my family’s memory, Palayil was a house where power passed from one female ancestor to the next. The keys were in the hands of the eldest female relatives and they were a symbol of belonging, authority and continuity. A woman’s security did not depend exclusively on marriage. Unmarried women, widows and daughters still had an established, recognized place to return to and a name to hold them.
Marriage was the be-all and end-all – lineage and inheritance passed through the women, and the children belonged to the mother’s thavad. This social system is proof that women’s wealth is not unnatural. It’s not a modern fantasy. And in countries like India it has always existed.
Marriage was the be-all and end-all – lineage and inheritance passed through the women, and the children belonged to the mother’s thavad. This social system is proof that women’s wealth is not unnatural. It’s not a modern fantasy. And in countries like India it has always existed.
And then, between 1925 and 1938, Kerala’s matrilineal inheritance system was dismantled by law and weakened under colonial rule – and finally struck from the statute book in 1975. British judges and administrators attempted to incorporate female-line households into the patriarchal system legal structures that they have understood.
The British rulers were looking for a male head of the family, an owner, a manager, a man who could stand in court and represent the household. This figure was often the oldest male member of the Tharavad, the Karanavar. The colonists, with support from the local royal family in Kerala undermined the women of the Tharavad by associating only with the older men. The Karanavars evolved into an inflated role as house managers, and some autocratic Karanavars began withdrawing girls from education and oppressing women at home. Society was never the same again.
There is hope for a different world that can be found in parallel economies like the Tharavad community system. What if some of the most advanced economies in the world today are the ones we barely recognize because they take place in kitchens, WhatsApp groups, lending circles and communities of women who quietly ensure that no one collapses alone?
For me, one of the most compelling examples is the Somali practice known as Ayuuto or Hagbad: a rotating savings circle in which a group of women deposit a fixed amount at regular intervals and one member in turn receives the entire pot. This is a practice that exists under many different names around the world. In Ethiopia, the equib was invented by country women who collected butter between households long before they handled money. In Jamaica, these savings circles are known as pardna. In Kenya, party. In South Korea there is Kye. In India, Kitty parties.
A bank requires collateral, pay stubs, paperwork, a guarantor, a credit history – all evidence that a woman already belongs to the formal economy. Savings circles ask different questions. Does our community know you? Are you familiar? What do you need the money for?
At the top of these systems are often women excluded from the formal economy, and although they vary by country, class and purpose, the structure remains strikingly similar. On the surface, the structure is almost simple: a circle, a post, a rotation, a pot. But that simplicity is the point. A bank requires collateral, pay stubs, paperwork, a guarantor, a credit history – all evidence that a woman already belongs to the formal economy. Savings circles ask different questions. Does our community know you? Are you familiar? What do you need the money for? It turns reputation into collateral, patience into credit, and community into financial infrastructure.
In displaced persons camps in Mogadishu, women used ayuuto not as a charming tradition but as a survival mechanism. A group of ten women gathered there every month, Everyone donates $10 before giving one member the entire pot. The money could pay for groceries, school fees, rent, supplies for a small store, or an emergency that couldn’t wait for an NGO, bank, or government agency to arrive.
In rural southern China, anthropologists studying rotating savings circles found that men were largely absent from them and questioned why. Across different centuries and currencies, the researchers found a recurring pattern: where the amounts are small enough to be invisible to institutions, The members are women.
And there are other examples of parallel economies in Europe. From around 1200 AD, women in the cities of what is now Belgium and the Netherlands, who did not want a husband or a monastery, bought houses close to each other to live in a community and support each other. The residents were called Beguines.
Women kept their property and worked in trades – brewing, weaving, lace-making, nursing – and in most beguinages, part of their earnings went into a common maintenance and support fund. Historians describe the walled enclosures as cities within cities and the beguinages themselves as women’s guilds: independent associations of women not subject to local authority.
These women-led parallel economies, practiced and defended over centuries, were built on conservation, reciprocity and collective resilience rather than extraction or accumulation.
While I’m writing my book HerlandsI kept discovering other ways in which women had secured long-term wealth. These women-led parallel economies, practiced and defended over centuries, were built on conservation, reciprocity and collective resilience rather than extraction or accumulation. This means their successes can remain hidden. There is no debt, no late payments and no eviction. These systems have been studied for decades, but as customs rather than financing, which is why the knowledge never reached the people who set the loan terms.
These women-led communities were not innocent of the world around them. They were fragile, compromised, shaped by caste, class, violence and hierarchy. And like in Kerala, some were dismantled by law. Others were reduced to historical memory: the name of a house, the story of a woman who held the keys, the sense that there had once been a different kind of belonging.
But they are not relics. Where women are excluded from formal wealth, they build parallel versions of it all over the world, from Kerala to Mogadishu, without ever comparing their experiences. The same principles repeat. The value is held as a whole and not shared. Credit is given based on what is known about a woman, not what can be extracted from her. Wealth is tied to something that cannot be easily liquidated – not to gold, but to a house, a lineage, a rotation, an obligation. The rules are made by the people who live among them, which is why these systems can fall into crisis faster than any bank or government.
The tragedy is not that women never had wealth. It’s because so many of the worlds they built and are still building have been dismantled, eroded and rarely known and celebrated.
To the banks and financial systems that have largely excluded women over the centuries, we should ask: Why is a property or land deed considered proof that a woman can be trusted with money when decades of depositing money into a circle does not? Why is a woman’s word worth less than her wealth? And how were laws created that say that a house that has been in a family for generations is ultimately a series of shares waiting to be divided?
In the case of my foremothers, their opinions were sought because their authority was understood. They were not just workers, wives or dependents. They were home builders, land managers, moneylenders, and creators of economic systems. Your legacy has been passed on to me. Today I have the key to the Palayil gate: a heavy, rusted brass lock with two old keys.
The tragedy is not that women never had wealth. It’s because so many of the worlds they built and are still building have been dismantled, eroded and rarely known and celebrated.
Herlands: Lessons From Societies Where Women Make the Rules by Megha Mohan was published by Penguin Random House in March 2026.
Edited by Charlie Brinkhurst-Cuff and Anastasia Moloney for Fuller.
Edited by Akshita Prasad for FII.