Origins
Henrietta Moore, a prominent theorist of feminist anthropology, argued that women had been included in some sense in anthropological theory and research since the discipline's birth. Early anthropologists from James Frazer to E.E. Evans-Pritchard were interested in kinship and marriage, so women always appeared in their ethnographies, and a number of women wrote early anthropological works. The problem, Moore argued, was not of presence in anthropology but of interpretation, representation, and understanding. She cites a 1976 study by Ruby Rohrlich-Leavitt et al. comparing analysis by male and female ethnographers of the social position of Aboriginal Australian women. Male ethnographers, Rohrlich-Leavitt wrote, said Aboriginal women were seen by their societies as profane and excluded from rituals, and were unimportant within the economy. The female ethnographers on the other hand said that the women were economically indispensable for subsistence, important in rituals, and were treated with respect by men. Moore presented this as proof that it is how women are included in anthropology that matters. The challenge, then, was to critically analyse existing anthropological literature and create new research, placing women at the centre.
Read more about this topic: Feminist Anthropology
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