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.
Early life and education
Mies was born in Hillesheim, Germany, on 6 February 1931 to Johann and Gertrud Mies. She came from a rural background, growing up in a family of farmers in Auel, a village in the Vulkaneifel region of the Prussian Rhine Province (now in Rhineland-Palatinate). She was the seventh of twelve children, who all worked in the fields while they were pupils at the local school with only one classroom. Her mother's temperament was optimistic, but her father was a patriarchal figure and caused fear for the family members with his anger. They were raised as Catholic. She was the first student from her village to complete secondary school, which she attended in Gerolstein, while boarding with a family friend. She then started at the Regino-Gymnasium in Prüm, but the school was closed in September 1944 because of the war.
From 1947, she trained in Trier where she earned her abitur and then enrolled at the Pedagogical Academy in Koblenz to become a primary school teacher. In order to attend courses free of charge, she had to agree to teach for five years. After two years of study, she was assigned to primary schools in Auel and later in Worms. In 1950, Mies met a Pakistani Muslim tourist who was travelling in Germany. Zulfiquar would have a profound influence on her life, as their relationship developed into a romance. Rejecting his proposal of marriage on the basis of their incompatible religions, led her to serious study of religious doctrines and patriarchy. She chose to remain single for many years in order to maintain her independence. In 1955, she asked for a new placement and was sent to Trier, where she taught and also studied English. Mies passed her secondary teacher's examination in 1962 and was assigned to teach English and German in Morbach. Unwilling to be a secondary school teacher, she applied to the Goethe Institute and asked for a placement in Asia or the Middle East.