There are actually several small tribal matriarchal societies which exist currently.

Quite fascinating they are too.

Firstly there's the Tuareg Tribe of the Sahara desert, which could perhaps be better described as matrilineal , in that property is handed down through the female line and women make important decisions regarding business and trade. Perhaps most fascinatingly is that the men of the tribe wear full face veils, whereas the women's faces remain uncovered, typically.

There's also the Mosuo group in China. Their women are expected to take multiple sexual partners, they apparently have no word for either husband or father and any children which result from their many dalliances are raised by the women's brothers.

While there may not have been a true large-scale matriarchal society that we know of, there were quite a few matrilineal societies/religions. However, some paleolithic Era societies show some hints towards small-scale matriarchal societies, with women leading small groups (under 100 people.) Also, in the 1990s there was some study that found a group within Africa that had two social structures - one filled with men and one filled with women. Each self-governing, the societies were practically separate, other than cross-societal individual relationships.

Other than those few cases, there aren't many incidents where clearly matriarchal societies existed. I find the question of why they didn't ever exist a bigger question, still relevant and unanswered today. What do you think?

Before the spread of Islam, many tribes in Arabia had female names. This pointed to that there were some pre-islamic matriarchal society's in Arabia. The village that is today Medina, was called Yathrib before the muslim migration, still had matriarchal traditions during the time islam started.