Anthropology of Women

Keridwen N. Luis

There are two ways to interpret “the anthropology of women:” One is as the work of women anthropologists, and the other is as anthropology that focuses on women as its subject. This entry deals with the latter, although for many reasons, the two often go hand in hand. Feminist anthropology, the ethnography of women, and female anthropologists have all been historically associated together, as it was feminist anthropologists—most of them women—who were first interested in doing fieldwork with women, writing ethnography about women, researching anthropological questions about women, and writing theory about women and gender. Many early ethnographies are notable for a distinct lack of women. Early male (and some female) ethnographers, speaking mostly or entirely to male informants, managed to create many ethnographic accounts that seemed to be entirely about men. A chapter in such an ethnography might be devoted to marriage and children (in which women would naturally ...

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