Feminist Anthropology can be divided into three approximate temporal categories. The first division is from 1850 to 1920 and is also referred to as the first wave or suffrage feminism. Up to this point ethnographies and much research in general had been done primarily by men for men. It also presumed that biological sex determined the individual’s roles in society. What the first wave feminist sought to do was include women’s voices in ethnography and also to give a female perspective to events. This opened up a completely new perspective, since male ethnographers had generally only had access to other males, and therefore, could only observe them or could only get their accounts of what women were like or what they were supposed to be like.

One of the women who was fundamental to this movement was Elsie Clews Parsons. She began her career with a Ph.D. in Sociology from Columbia in 1899, but she met Pliny, Goldenweiser, Lowie, Kroeber, Sapir, and Boas several years later, and was converted to anthropology. She was very much the social activist, using her ethnographic skills to encourage people to think in new ways about their own experiences and lives. In order to further promote social reform, she thought it was very important that anthropology be taught as part of all liberal education. Her insightful notions of feminism and concepts of what determines social and cultural norms are issues that are still being debated today. Through her travels with male anthropological colleagues to the southwest, she sought to break the restrictions placed on men and women working together. She never held a formal anthropological teaching career at a university, but her influence was far reaching. Using her wealth and affluence, she established the Southwest Society. This helped support other anthropologists including Benedict, and it underwrote The Journal of American Folklore (Deacon 1997).

Another first wave feminist was Alice Fletcher who was among the first generation of professional anthropologists, being the first woman to have a paid professional position at Harvard. Like Parsons, she was an activist and a reformer, but her interests rested mainly with American Indians. She codeveloped the Dawes Act which sought to break up reservations, and undo the notion that the Indians should be wards of the state. She worked on Plains Indians’ ceremonies and music. She was also interested in suffrage and helped found the Association for the Advancement of Women (Winter 1991; Fletcher 1897).

Working in British anthropology, Phyllis Kayberry earned her Ph.D. at the London School of Economics, where she worked with Malinowski. She pioneered anthropological research on women in their social contexts. Her work examined both men and women and their relationships, especially focusing on their religion. She is responsible for the development of a systemic study of gender relationships. Her work took on even more significance with the decolonialization of Africa after WW II (Winter 1991). Her book, Women of the Grassfields, focuses on women’s work and rural development, a notion that has not been re-examined closely until recently when anthropologists working on development issues suggested that all the existing economic models for development totally ignored women’s’ labor contributions.

Second wave feminism stretched from approximately 1920 to 1980. These feminists separated sex and gender as descriptive categories; previously they had been used interchangeably. Sex is defined more as determined by biology and in turn effecting biology. Gender was therefore culturally shaped. The category "woman" could unite all females, as it was considered the most significant role and therefore the strongest categorical identification. Anthropologists tended to write as if all women had the same experiences and problems. Additionally, concepts were frequently set up as opposing dichotomies i.e. sex/culture, men/women, work/home; this may have been convenient for comparison, but it did not allow for overlap between these terms

Margaret Mead was a key contributor to this distinction. It was her work in a diversity of cultures which allowed her work to help break down prejudices that were based on concepts of what is "natural" into an understanding of the importance of culture in people’s development. One of the prominent Boasians, Margaret Mead made major contributions in the gender arena with her work, which examined the influence of culture on human social development by separating biological and cultural factors that control human behavior and personality development. This began with Coming of Age in Samoa (1928) and later Sex and Temperament (1950). Her influence extended beyond anthropology because it was so popular among general audiences (McGee and Warms 1996).

There were also two authors from outside of anthropology that influenced feminist anthropology at this time. The first was Simone de Beauvoir, a French existentialist philosopher, whose Second Sex (1952) argued that women have been defined by men and that if they attempt to break with this then they risk alienating themselves. The second is psychologist and cofounder of the National Organization for Women, Betty Friedan’s Feminine Mystique (1963) which looked at gender roles inside families and modern women in traditional roles.

In the second half of this wave, frequently referred to as the "Anthropology of Women," Eleanor Leacock was interested in ethnohistorical studies of the Innu. She focused on social and gender relations while reevaluating Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels’ work. She also questioned Julian Steward’s work on hunting and trapping through a method called "anthropology on the ground" whereby she talked to English speaking informants to find out what, when, and where they hunted, then she mapped out the pattern herself to avoid informant’s overgeneralization (Gacs, Khan, McIntyre, & Weinberg 1989).

In the early 1970s women like Lucy Slocum argued that anthropology had androcentric and eurocentric biases and assumptions to their studies. This notion was also reevaluated by archaeologists and primateologist who examined the notion about man-the-hunter hypothesis; their work has challenged assumptions about assigning jobs and roles based on biological differences in skeletal material (Morgen 1989). In 1974 Michelle Rosaldo and Louise Lamphere edited another ground breaking work, Woman, Culture, and Society, which emerged from a class at Stanford University. Rosaldo also researched the notion that women frequently participate in behavior that limit them, and therefore, one must look at the over all system (Collier and Yanagisako 1989). Jane Collier and Sylvia Yanagisako have expanded Rosaldo’s work whereby they analyze gender forming through hierarchy.

Gayle Rubin (1975) again brought gender to the anthropological table. She introduced the "sex/gender system": which again distinguished biology from behavior. This text started a discussion which has kept its momentum over the last 20 years (Cassell 1996). It was also at this time that women is studies became feminist anthropology, an area that has pioneered work on representation (Morgen 1989).

In Is Male is to Females as Nature is to Culture? Sherry Ortner (1974) examines women’s subordination to men cross culturally and through time. Here she suggested that women have been symbolically associated with nature. Nature is subordinate to men; therefore, women are subordinate to men. Marxists feminists’ explanations also go back to Engels’ work where he suggested that women’s subordination is the result of their lack of access to the productive sphere. Of course, all of these subsume that women are always subordinate to men everywhere.

Correspondingly there was a British tradition expanding at this time. Shirley Ardner worked on the concept of women’s status as a "muted group." Others, such as Pat Caplan and Janet Bujura, were part of the London Women’s Anthropology group which evaluated female solidarity and the popularity of Marxist theory brought about research with women, reproduction, and production (Lamphere 1997).

In third wave feminism. This period extends roughly from 1980 to the present. Anthropologists had been "haunted" by biological determinism which suggested that gender was a straight forward cause and effect phenomenon from physiological differences. However, these questions cannot be simplified to a cause and effect relationship and the trends since the 1980s propose a reversal of the earlier separation of biology and culture by indicating that sex is also a social category like gender, because people do have social expectations which are based on the physical body. Additionally, more detailed work in endocrinology and physiology made it increasingly difficult to distinguish between biology and cultural factors. The dichotomies stressed by second wave feminist were problematic at times because it was so hard to separate women from men and other factors such as class. This coupled with Said’s Orientalism, as well as postmodern discourse, encouraged an evaluation of representation and as a result a number of non white, non middle class voices were added. Furthermore, being categorized as woman no longer supersedes other distinctions and roles. Class, race, ethnicity, socioeconomic status, religion, etc. are also recognized as important characteristics that diversify the category of women; in other words it is acknowledged that all women do not have the same universal needs and experiences. Feminism pioneered work in representation, recognizing that theories are influenced by historical, political, social, and cultural contexts which brings about questions regarding anthropologists relationships with their informants. Feminism in the 1980s and 1990s has centered on production and work, reproduction and sexuality, and gender and the state (Lamphere 1997; Morgen 1989). It has also been during this time that men in the "Anthropology of Men" began to look at "man" in a similar manner as feminist had been evaluating "woman." In the 1990s women’s studies would be changed to gender studies, reflecting a more comprehensive perspective.

There are four overriding theories or lines of thinking that have influenced feminist anthropology over the last 18 years. The first of which is Practice Theory (some people prefer to call this a symbol and not a theory i.e. Collier and Yanagisako) which borrowed from Marx’s suggestion that all social activity comes down to praxis (practice). Feminist practice is about real people doing real things; culture is therefore deliberate. It is about how people behave not about a quality they possess (Conkey & Gero 1997). The system that practice analyzes is one of equality and restriction. There is a realization that the anthropological perspective carries a powerful influence. It is a reaction against Durkhiem’s sacred and profane which assumed that women did not have a symbolic position. Also, it questions how systems can be reproduced despite their inequality, instability, and contradictions and it disputes the necessity of breaking everything into dichotomies. Again it is replacing Durkhiem’s static with dynamics such as struggle and resistance (Collier and Yanagisako 1989). Ortner, also a prominent figure in the third wave, (1996) argues that gender is determined by the fact women are creators of nature, e.g. children, and men are creators of culture. This basic theme is carried through various articles in Making Gender. She suggests that women were once considered dangerous and therefore, had rules, but now they are perceived to be in danger, so they still have rules to follow for explaining idealism in female virginity. There is a lengthy discussion about rank and gender in Polynesia, and also Tibetan monks and nuns. Here not everything is not what it appears to be on the surface, and one of her main points is that women may be excluded from certain positions, etc. but so are most men who do not rank high in the society.

In the late 1980s Positionality Theory developed as a reaction against cultural feminism and deconstruction. The latter is an essential view which suggests that there is a female essence and that female values should be validated. In other words women should not be putting on business suits and entering men’s worlds, but that they should be promoting female essence as positive characteristics (e.g. nurturing). In other words they can play by their own rules. Major proponents of this include Mary Daly and Adrienne Rich. On the other hand French Post structuralists have criticized cultural feminism because it seemingly ignores the oppressive powers under which those values were created. This results in a "negative feminism" in the sense that they are tearing concepts down instead of building them up. Positionality argues that this also can make gender invisible again (Alcoff 1994).

Thirdly, Performance Theory is an extension of the anti-structuralists of the 1970s. It "defines gender as the effect of discourse, and sex as the effect of gender. The theory is characterized by a concern with the productive force rather than the meaning of discourse and by its privileging of ambiguity and indeterminacy." It has been influenced Bourdieu, de Certeau, and Sahlins whose theory of cultural history suggests that change occurs because of competing interests and different advantages at any one time in history (Morris 1995:567).

The fourth theory, Queer Theory, defines itself in opposition against the concept of "normalcy" not just heterosexuality, and it questions socialization. It attempts to cut across gender traditions. It was very influenced by Foucault and constructionalist theory and contemporary writers include Judith Mayne, Judith Butler, and Diana Fuss, in addition to a number of people in French Feminism including Monique Wittig (Warner 1993).

Other prominent researchers in the third wave besides those already mentioned include Nancy Scheper-Hughes who looked at life histories among Brazilian women. Anna Tsing (1993) who wrote about marginality in Indonesia. They are part of a group of feminist ethnographic writers who have been instrumental in suggesting that there is no universal definition for "man" and "woman" across cultures or through history. Also included in this group is Abu-Lughod whose book, Writing Women’s Worlds, attempts to deconstruct culture. One of her central themes is that culture is boundless which she demonstrates through Bedouin women’s stories as well as the idea that Bedouin women find advantages in a gender separated society. Subsequent work has also been done to clear the great misunderstanding many western feminist have for Islam and Hinduism, and feminist in the Middle East and India especially work on issues surrounding the veil and seclusion or bride burning respectively. Furthermore, Islam has created a certain amount of conformity, but in the last few years regional variations have been more closely analyzed. Like other areas of the world, the Middle East is composed of or influenced by diverse components including economy, politics, religion, ethnicity, and class and scholars have been trying to realize the different experiences that these produce at local levels. These discussions have been further complicated by the politics in that area. Additionally, there have been similarly significant discussions that have been influenced by post colonial realization, but with the realization that western feminists’ concepts of oppression, subjugation, and exploitation may not always be appropriate in other contexts (Hale 1989; Fruzzetti 1989).

Researching in the U.S. with an emphasis on the body, Peggy Sanday looked at power relationships through rape. Emily Martin (1997) took a slightly different approach by examining physical science’s stereotypes in both its research and it’s discourse. She cites examples where women’s biological processes are less worthy than men’s. For example, menstruation means that an egg has failed to be fertilized, uterine lining is labeled as "debris," men are much more prolific thus being able to produce more gametes than women. Even more ironic is that this discourse personifies cells which Martin finds even more disturbing than what is being attributed to them.

Today feminist anthropology is a subset within cultural anthropology whose view point can either be a specific theory, as delineated above, or it can be a lens for looking at other categories and subfields e.g. political, development, archaeology, etc. Contemporary research goes much further than including the female voice; it also analyzes gender division in the work force, but ambiguity is now recognized between what can be attributed to biology and culture. Additionally, feminist anthropologists look at child care, reproductive rights, control of resources and inequality, aggression, performance in school, female circumcision etc. (Ember 1996).

The above have been formalized in the Association of Feminist Anthropology which is a section in the American Anthropological Society that was founded in 1988 with the purpose of creating a network of people interested in gender research. They publish a newsletter, Voices, three times a year (in November, February, and July). Of scholarly journals, feminist anthropologists frequently publish in Signs which is an interdisciplinary journal published by University of Chicago Press since 1975. By 1993 AFA had a membership of over 700 and they were sponsoring sessions at the annual meetings. The current Chair (1996-98) is Louise Lamphere from the University of New Mexico. Their purpose statement is the following:

The association also sponsors the Sylvia Forman essay contest to recognize up and coming research by feminist scholars. Forman was a feminist anthropologist who wrote on employment among other things. This year’s submitted essays reflect the diversity in feminist research. Some of these include research on battered women who kill their abusers, gender and street survival, motherhood and space, women and religion, marriage, homosexuality, etc. (Rodriguez 1998). Her former students also published a book in her memory, entitled Gender and Race Through Education and Political Activism (1995) which are examples of her influence on her students work.

In summary, feminist anthropology has contributed a diverse group of voices to the field from the point of view of the researcher, in addition to representing voices from a plethora of different groups of women. It has ensured that women are heard, even when they may have to take more subtle approaches to authority through acts of resistance. They have been influential in women’s rights in the U.S. fighting for pay equity, the right to work in the public or private sphere, all in all stressing that women have the right to make choices for themselves. However, there has been a growing awareness that these things are not necessarily issues for all women around the world, and feminist anthropology has tried to bring to light their concerns and to find ways in which these women can empower themselves to effect change.

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