Arachnid Matriarchs: Untangling Human Social Biases Using Spider Natural History

This is a creative companion piece of an observational research project that I conducted with my friend and colleague, Aindri, as part of the Lodha Genius Program (Cohort 2024) hosted by Ashoka University. 

Our project sought to explore prevailing gender biases in humans through the lens of social spiders, for which we did mixed-method structured interviews and on-field observations of said spiders around the campus.

I would like to thank the program, my fellow researcher, and my professors — John, Priyanjana and Ishika, for providing me with the opportunity to explore and engage deeply with the fascinating world of spiders. This not only strengthened my research but also inspired the creation of this literary counterpart. 

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Have you ever seen a matriarchy caught in a spider’s web? Or wondered if spiders might be feminists? Have you watched these tiny architects weave their shimmering empires and wondered if they might be whispering truths about power, gender and dominance — truths that could unravel our own? Probably not.

When I first brought up spiders in conversation, people wrinkled their noses. Dust, corners, poison, fear—that’s what they pictured. But the deeper I went, the clearer it became that we weren’t really talking about spiders at all. We were talking about ourselves.

The smiling spider [L'Araignée] by Bertrand-Jean Redon (1887) is a lithograph that depicts the spider with a human smile — an invitation by the artist to confront what we fear, but also to recognize that fear comes from within us. The spider doesn’t just symbolize an external creature; it symbolizes our own projections. Photo source: Wikimedia Commons

Take the golden orb-weaver. The female is enormous compared to the male, spinning cathedral webs. She chooses her mate, commands reproduction and sometimes he becomes her post-copulatory snack. Power, in her world, unlike the world of Homo sapiens, is not the exception but the rule. 

In Nephila pilipes, the female is much larger than the male (the small red spider on the female's back). To avoid any potential conflict (read: sometimes being eaten), the male uses fine lines of silk to give his potential mate a courtship backrub. Photo: Samuel John

Yet, our survey of forty participants across India revealed something telling: nearly half mistook spiders for insects and almost all projected human stories onto arachnid lives. A hunter chasing prey? Male. A still figure with eggs? Female. The stereotypes from our own cultural loom leapt effortlessly across species.

When our respondents saw this picture, many assumed that it was a male because it was seen hunting - a possible bias influenced by a patriarchal lens on gender roles. Photo: Samuel John

But nature laughed at these guesses. The fierce predator tearing into a centipede is no male warrior. The male, in fact, cannot command lethal sovereignty. Again and again, participants imposed human scripts of masculinity and femininity onto creatures that had already written their own.

When participants discovered this, laughter gave way to wonder. “This cannot be practical in human society,” some protested. Others drew parallels to India’s matrilineal Khasi society, where inheritance flows through mothers. For those willing to look closely, the spiders became many-eyed mirrors, reflecting the possibility that our hierarchies are not destiny, but design. Were spiders, in fact, tiny revolutionaries?

For me, this was the most striking finding: bias doesn’t live only in dusty textbooks or old laws, it lurks in the way we interpret even a spider’s eight-legged dance. Neuroscientist Gina Rippon’s claim that a “gendered world creates a gendered brain” echoed in every guess, every pause, every nervous laugh when participants realized how much they had assumed.

Yet bias isn’t immovable. After the outreach, some participants began to speak of spiders differently — not just as pests, but as engineers, inspirations, even role models. Perception had shifted, however slightly, through the lens of a web.

Virginia Woolf once wrote that science itself is “infected” by patriarchy. I see now what she meant. Even our research on animals isn’t free from bias: we celebrate flashy male behaviors and overlook quiet female strategies. But spiders compel us to look again. They don’t play by our rules.

Can the male spider attract the female for mating without becoming her post-copulatory snack?

So the next time I see a matriarch stretching across a corner web, I’ll remember that power isn’t always where we expect it. Sometimes, it’s hanging right above our heads - waiting for us to notice.

It never was a man’s world — at least in the spiderverse.

Females of Telamonia dimidiata (The two-striped jumping spider), Uloborus sp. (Feather-legged spider), Wolf spider (with babies on her back), Neoscona sp. (Spotted orb-weaver), Myrmyrachne sp. (Ant-mimicking spider). Photos: Samuel John

Click here to learn more about this project.

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About the author: 

Touyiba is a valley child who loves history, politics and Johnny from Hotel Transylvania. 

She's keen to explore the bridge between nature and culture through folktales and vivid narrations. You might envy her for her WhatsApp sticker collection.