Discussion Leader Assignment: Feminist Anthropology

Minakshi Das

ANTH 5010

Discussion Leader Assignment: Feminist Anthropology

10/16/2015

Introduction

Feminist Anthropology started gaining momentum as a result of male centric bias within the field in the early works of the 20th century researchers. An important point to mention here is that some of the earliest anthropologists in America have been females, i.e. Margaret Mead and Ruth Benedict so as a field, Anthropology has been a lot more accepting of female researchers compared to other disciplines. However, as we can see from some of the earliest written Anthropological literature, it has been written by male researchers, geared to the male audience. Feminist Anthropology emerged when anthropologists, (both men and women) started looking

There is no specific start or beginning of each of these waves, but historically has been a gradual process of moving from one wave to the other. The emphasis of the first wave during the late 19th to early 20th century was to include the voice of the woman in ethnographic research. During this time most ethnographic research was conducted by male researchers, of male subjects, for the male audience (Pine 1996: 253). Very little information was captured of the female study subject in different cultures and any information that did exist was transmitted through male researchers. The emphasis was not only on the women subject, but also on the women who were working in academia who wanted to have their voices heard in research work. This wave brought about a collection of women from different fields and industries who tried in their own way to include the female voice through whatever means that they

This wave concentrates on the complex gender identities and also non-white women. Research emphasizing ethnic women in the industry is also coming to the forefront and shaping the way for other minority women to also have their voices heard. In the previous two waves, there were still limitations in the way non-white women were perceived by the white female anthropologist. This idea that “ethnic women” needs to be saved by the Western female Anthropologist has slowly been eradicated and now follows a process of understanding ethnic minority women instead of trying to just save them. This wave pushes the boundaries of stereotyping, and gender roles in communities across the world. Research is being conducted not just between a man and a woman, but also individuals who fall on various stages of the spectrum in their gender identity. The emphasis has also been to include women’s voices in traditionally male dominated fields within Anthropology like Archaeology and Physical Anthropology (Geller and Stockett, 2006). This current wave takes into consideration various facets of a human gender identity and are slowly incorporating the changes in the current world to the theoretical and research framework. With power dynamics changing in today’s globalized world, the role of a woman is no longer the same as it were in the 50s or the 60’s. Even though there are still hindrances