Women's perspective have been present in anthropology since women entered the field of anthropology. Some of the most important early female anthropologists are: Erminnie Platt Smith, Alice Cunningham Fletcher, Matilda Coxe Stevenson, Frances Densmore, Margaret Mead, Ruth Benedict Hortense Powdermaker, and Zora Neale Hurston. Feminist anthropology, as a distinct subdiscipline and approach in anthropology, started in the 1970s. Seminal edited works that established this approach are Woman, Culture, and Society, published in 1974, consisting of 16 papers by female authors edited by Michelle Zimbalist Rosaldo and Louise Lamphere; and Toward an Anthropology of Women (1975) edited by Rayna Reiter. The first wave of feminist anthropological studies in the 1970s presumed that there exists universal and global sexual subordination of women. They saw mainstream anthropological research as male-biased. In later decades feminist anthropology adapted Marxist and poststructuralist approaches and included perspectives of non-white and minority women. The main exponents of feminist anthropology are: Eleanor Leacock, Rubin Gayle, Sherry Ortner, Behar Ruth, Michelle Rosaldo, Louise Lamphere, Nancy Scheper-Hughes, Anna Tsing, Lila Abu-Lughod, Micaela Di Leonardo, Sandra Morgen, Carol B. Stack, Henrietta Moore, Ethel Albert, Wazir Jahan Kamir, Judith Nagata, Chandra Talpade Mohanty, and Rajeswari Sunder Rajan.

Books: 

Abu-Lughod, Lila.  Writing Women's Worlds: Bedouin Stories (1993);

Bell, D., Kaplan P., Karim, Wazir J. (eds.), Gendered Fields: Women, Men, and Ethnography (1993);

Brettell, Caroline, and Carolyn Sargent. Gender in Cross-Cultural Perspective (1992);

Di Leonardo, Micaela. Gender at the Crossroads of Knowledge: Feminist Anthropology in the Postmodern Era (1991);

Karim, Wazir. J. Women and Culture: Between Malay Adat and Islam (1992);

Mohanty, Chandra T. Feminism Without Borders: Decolonizing Theory, Practicing Solidarity (2003);

Mohanty, C. T., Russo, A., & Torres, L. (eds.)  Third World Women and the Politics of Feminism (1991);

Moore, Henrietta. Feminism and Anthropology (1988);

Morgen, Sandra (ed.). Gender and Anthropology: Critical Reviews for Research and Teaching (1989);

Ortner, Sherry. Making Gender: The Politics and Erotics of Culture (1996);

Ruth, Behar and Deborah A. Gordon (eds.). Women Writing Culture (1995);

Sunder Rajan, Rajeswari. Real and Imagined Women: Gender, Culture, and Postcolonialism (1993);

Reiter, Rayna (ed.).Toward an Anthropology of Women (1975); 

Zimbalist, Michelle Rosaldo and Louise Lamphere (ed.). Woman, Culture, and Society (1974).