German professor of sociology and author (1931–2023)
Maria Mies
Born
(1931-02-06)6 February 1931
Hillesheim, Rhine Province, Prussia, Germany
Died
15 May 2023(2023-05-15) (aged 92)
Education
University of Cologne (PhD)
Occupations
Professor of sociology
Writer
Employer(s)
Goethe Institute (1963–1967) Cologne University of Applied Sciences (1972–1974; 1981–1993) University of Frankfurt Institute for Social Research (1974–1977) International Institute of Social Studies (1979–1981)
Organisation(s)
Frauenforum Köln, Attac
Notable work
Indian Women and Patriarchy (1980)
Patriarchy and Accumulation on a World Scale (1986)
Women: The Last Colony (1988)
Ecofeminism (1993)
The Subsistence Perspective (1999)
Spouse
Saral Sarkar
(m. 1976)
Maria Mies (6 February 1931 – 15 May 2023) was a German professor of sociology, a Marxist feminist, an activist for women's rights, and an author. She came from a rural background in the Volcanic Eifel, and initially trained to be a teacher. After working for several years as a primary school teacher and qualifying as a high school instructor, she applied to the Goethe Institute, hoping to work in Africa or Asia. Assigned to a school in Pune, India, she discovered that while her male students took German courses to further their education, women for the most part took her classes to avoid marriage. Returning to study at the University of Cologne, she prepared her dissertation about contradictions of social expectations for women in India in 1971, earning her PhD the following year.
Mies was active in social movements from the late 1960s. Her activism was in favour of women's liberation and pacifism and against the Vietnam War and nuclear armaments. She taught sociology at the Cologne University of Applied Sciences and University of Frankfurt Institute for Social Research in the 1970s. Becoming aware of the lack of knowledge about women's history, she helped found and then gave lectures at the first women's shelter in Germany. In 1979, she began teaching women's studies at the International Institute of Social Studies in The Hague and founded a master's degree programme for women from developing countries, based on feminist theory.
Returning to Germany and the University of Applied Sciences in 1981, Mies became involved in the ecofeminist movement and in activism against genetic engineering and reproductive technology. She coined the phrase "housewifisation" for the processes that devalue women's labour and make it invisible. From the 1980s, she wrote extensively about the intersection between capitalism, patriarchy and colonialism. Mies was one of the first scholars to recognise the similarities between the socio-politico-economic positions held by women and colonised people. Her works theorised that women and colonised people's labour was devalued and exploited under capitalism, and studied the links between women's struggles for liberation and their broader struggles for social and environmental justice. One of her main concerns was the development of an alternative, feminist and decolonial approach in methodology and in economics. Her pioneering work, which included writing textbooks on the history of women's movements, has garnered international analysis and been translated into several languages.
MariaMies (6 February 1931 – 15 May 2023) was a German professor of sociology, a Marxist feminist, an activist for women's rights, and an author. She...
commonly referred to as Mies, his surname. He is regarded as one of the pioneers of modern architecture. In the 1930s, Mies was the last director of...
Mies may refer to: Ludwig Mies van der Rohe (1886–1969), German-American architect MariaMies (1931–2023), German feminist Richard W. Mies (born 1944)...
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Division of Labour". MariaMies and Vandana Shiva, Ecofeminism. 15 – via SAGE Publications. Lay, Stefanie (1994). ""Ecofeminism" by MariaMies and Vandana Shiva"...
Ecology are grounded in a materialist analysis.[citation needed] MariaMies – Mies is a German social critic who has been involved in feminist work throughout...
Maria Antoinette "Mies" Bouwman (31 December 1929 – 26 February 2018) was a Dutch television presenter. Born in Amsterdam, she started her career on the...
Eva Maria LaRue (/ləˈruː/; born December 27, 1966) is an American actress and model. She is known for her roles as Maria Santos on All My Children and...
Maria Augusta von Trapp DHS (née Kutschera; 26 January 1905 – 28 March 1987), often styled as “Baroness”, was the stepmother and matriarch of the Trapp...
"Beautiful Maria of my Soul" (Spanish: Bella María de mi alma) is a song prominently featured in the 1992 motion picture The Mambo Kings. In the film...
Walter Burkert, classical scholar (d. 2015 in Switzerland) February 6 – MariaMies, sociologist and feminist (died 2023) February 7 – Holger Börner, politician...
French and German. From 1976, Sarkar was married to the sociologist MariaMies, until her death in 2023. Patrick Harrington; Terry Burgoyne (1 August...
Salleh's materialist analysis is closer to that of fellow sociologists MariaMies in Germany and Mary Mellor in the United Kingdom. Reproductive labor and...
criticised as biased by feminist economists such as Marilyn Waring and MariaMies because no imputation for the monetary value of unpaid housework, or for...
questions of the women's movement and feminist theory. Together with MariaMies and Veronika Bennholdt-Thomsen, she is a co-founder of ecofeminism and...
Maria Bamford (born September 3, 1970) is an American actress and stand-up comedian. Her work often uses self-deprecating and dark topics, including her...
Bob Jessop Boris Kagarlitsky Henri Lefebvre Marcel Liebman Michael Löwy MariaMies Robert Miles Ralph Miliband Antonio Negri Evgeny Pashukanis Nicos Poulantzas...
1405–1412. ISSN 0012-9976. JSTOR 4410544. Mies, Maria (1981), "Utopian socialism and women's emancipation", in Mies, Maria; Jayawardena, Kumari (eds.), Feminism...
(edited); Common Notions, 2015 Wages for housework Leopoldina Fortunati MariaMies Silvia Federici Wright, Steve (2002). Storming Heaven: Class composition...
Michael Hardt David Harvey John Holloway Srećko Horvat George Katsiaficas MariaMies Antonio Negri Immanuel Ness Oscar Olivera Kristin Ross Beverly Silver...