Maria Mies

Maria Mies, born in 1931, is a distinguished German sociologist, university teacher, ecofeminist, and writer. Hailing from a rural background in the Volcanic Eifel, she initially pursued a career in education, training as a primary school teacher before qualifying as a high school instructor. Her journey took a transformative turn when she applied to the Goethe Institute, aspiring to work in Africa or Asia. Assigned to a school in Pune, India, she observed a stark contrast in her students' motivations: while her male students sought German courses to enhance their education, many female students attended her classes primarily to evade marriage.

Returning to Germany, Mies continued her academic pursuits at the University of Cologne, where she focused her dissertation on the contradictions of social expectations for women in India, earning her PhD in 1972. Her activism began in the late 1960s, advocating for women's liberation, pacifism, and opposing the Vietnam War and nuclear armaments. Mies taught sociology at the Cologne University of Applied Sciences and the University of Frankfurt Institute for Social Research during the 1970s, where she became increasingly aware of the historical neglect of women's contributions.

In 1979, she began teaching women's studies at the International Institute of Social Studies in The Hague, where she established a master's degree program aimed at women from developing countries, grounded in feminist theory. Upon her return to Germany in 1981, Mies became actively involved in the ecofeminist movement, opposing genetic engineering and reproductive technology. She introduced the term 'housewifisation' to describe the processes that render women's labor invisible and devalued.

Throughout the 1980s, Mies extensively explored the intersections of capitalism, patriarchy, and colonialism, becoming one of the first scholars to draw parallels between the socio-economic positions of women and colonized peoples. Her work theorized the exploitation of women's and colonized people's labor under capitalism, linking their struggles for liberation to broader social and environmental justice movements. Mies has been a pivotal figure in advocating for alternative feminist and decolonial methodologies in economics, and her influential writings, including textbooks on women's movements, have received international recognition and translation.