 Feminist anthropology is a theory that combines anthropology (the study of humans) and feminism (the political

movement for the equal rights of women).

 Feminist anthropologists first reacted against the fact that the discussion of women in the anthropological
literature had been restricted to the areas of marriage, kinship, and family.

 Feminist anthropology emerged in response to the recognition that across the subdisciplines, anthropology
operated within andocentric paradigms.

 Before the 1960s most anthropologists were men. Most anthropology research was about men. Women
were left out of research as both the researcher and the subject. Feminist anthropologists were concerned
about men's bias. Anthropology research was mostly from the point of view of men.

 It is a four-field approach to anthropology (archeological, biological, cultural, linguistic) that seeks to transform
research findings, anthropological hiring practices, and the scholarly production of knowledge, using insights from
feminist theory.

 Feminist anthropologists believe that the failure of past researchers to treat the issues of women and gender as
significant has led to a deficient understanding of the human experience (McGee andWarms 1996:391, from
Morgen 1989:1)

 Feminist anthropology contributes a diverse group of voices to the field from the researcher’s point of view, in
addition to representing voices of different groups of women (Bratton 1998).

 Feminist anthropology changed how anthropologists study women. Feminist anthropology is important and
impacts many areas of anthropology.

 By the 1980s and 90s, however, feminist anthropologists began to move away from studying women as a unitary
category and instead considered and complicated the material, political, economic, and medical conditions within
which gender is articulated and mobilized.