There were communities of women in Europe, run by women, from the early Middle Ages until the present. They were called convents or abbeys, and they were and are Christian religious communities for nuns. The abbess or leader was generally elected by the community and confirmed by a higher male authority, but women's religious orders have rigid hierarchies and strict rules, just like the men's. One of those rules is no men in the convent.

I've seen a photo essay about the community of Kihnu in Estonia lately, and I have to say that the women there look rough, as in they've had rough lives. Their faces are very careworn and their postures are stooped from toil. Maternal or paternal, when you take modern technology out of a society everyone has to physically work harder, and will live shorter lives. That these maternal societies are all pretty low tech is not a selling point. The simple life sounds wonderful until you actually have to do it. Here we call that "poverty".