Maria Mies

Maria Mies
File:MariaMies.jpg Mies in 2021
Born	(1931-02-06)6 February 1931 Hillesheim, Rhine Province, Prussia, Germany
Died	15 May 2023(2023-05-15) (aged 92)
Nationality	German
Education	University of Cologne
Occupations	Professor of sociology Writer
Organizations	Fachhochschule Köln
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
Spouse	Saral Sarkar
Awards	Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany

Maria Mies (6 February 1931 – 15 May 2023) was a German professor of sociology, Marxist feminist, activist for women's rights, and author. She came from a rural background in the Vulkaneifel, and wrote her dissertation about the conditions of women in India that she researched. From the late 1960s, her work focused on the intersection between capitalism, patriarchy and colonialism. She wrote extensively on the ways in which women's labour was devalued and exploited under capitalism, and how women's struggles for liberation are intertwined with the 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.

Mies received numerous awards for her contributions to feminist scholarship, including the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany in 2001.

Early life and education

Mies was born in Hillesheim 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. She was the seventh of twelve children, who all worked in the fields while they were students at the local school where all children were taught in one room. 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 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 certification 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 (GI) and asked for a placement in Asia or the Middle East.

Career

In 1963, Mies was accepted by GI to lecture in Pune, India, on a five-year teaching engagement. She taught German classes and discovered that her male students enrolled to enhance their ability to study engineering, but women took her courses to prolong their independence, as for middle-class women, marriage was not required until after they completed a bachelor's degree. One of her students, Chhaya Datar, would later become head of the women's studies department at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, and another Saral Sarkar, would become her husband. In 1967, her mother became gravely ill and Mies asked to be released from her contract. Soon after her return to Germany her mother made a full recovery, and Mies enrolled at the University of Cologne to study sociology under René König. Using her observations during her time in India about women's behavior and the contradictions of social expectations for women, she prepared her PhD thesis Rollenkonflikte gebildeter indischer Frauen (Role Conflicts of Educated Indian Women) in 1971. She earned her degree in 1972, and her thesis was published the following year.

The late 1960s and early 1970s was a period of global protest and Mies became involved in activism. She participated in protests against the Vietnam War and nuclear armaments in the annual pacifist Easter March. She joined Frauenforum Köln (Women's Forum Cologne), a local women's group tied to the women's liberation movement, which protested patriarchal structures and the devaluation of women. She taught at the newly founded Cologne University of Applied Sciences, before accepting a post in 1974 to teach at the University of Frankfurt Institute for Social Research. For three years, she presented seminars on the historic international women's movement in hopes of convincing the university to establish a women's study chair. In 1975, she attended the World Conference on Women in Mexico City and realized how little was known about women's history. The following year, she joined with other activists, mainly students of her classes, to found the first women's shelter (Frauenhaus) in Germany, in Cologne. Mies gave lectures at the shelter to teach women practical and political ways to combat violence. She returned to the University of Applied Sciences in 1977, but decided to conduct a research project in India the following year.

Mies arrived in India in 1978 to analyze rural subsistence production, meaning how domestic and farm labor, as well as cottage industry, allowed families to survive, but also led to the expansion of wealth for landlords and industries. She remained in India through 1979 and spent time with her former pupil, Sarkar, who was at the time, a lecturer at the GI in Hyderabad. The results of her study of rural industry were published as The Lacemakers of Narsapur: Indian Housewives Produce for the World Market in 1982. She returned to Europe after accepting a position at the International Institute of Social Studies in The Hague. There, she created a master's degree program for women from developing countries. To complete the practical requirements, Mies made contact with local feminist groups so that the students could work on joint projects. The administration decided not to renew the "Women and Development" program for the next semester, but Mies and her students successfully protested and the course continued to be offered.

In 1981, Mies decided to return to Cologne and the University of Applied Sciences. There she became involved in the ecofeminist movement, as well as activism against genetic engineering and reproductive technology, which she saw as an expropriation of women’s right to give birth and a commercialization of human production. She was one of the founders of the Feminist International Network of Resistance to Reproductive and Genetic Engineering. She became more active in pacifist activities, participating in a resistance camp protesting against a NATO plan to station nuclear warheads in Germany in 1983. Her pacifism was reinforced by her opposition to the idea put forth by Alice Schwarzer that women could gain emancipation if they had the same violent means available that men had. Opposed to war, Mies could not reconcile that simple equality with men would overcome hierarchical systems that devalued women. From the mid-1980s, she published her most important works which explored the links between patriarchy, capitalism and colonialism in the exploitation and subjugation of women. Having retired from teaching in 1993, she continued to be active in women's and other social movements; she was a member of feministAttac, a women-led network of Attac.

Personal life

In 1950, Mies met a Pakistani Muslim tourist who was traveling 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 to maintain her independence. In 1976, she married Sarkar, with the intent of having a visiting marriage so that each could continue their careers in their respective countries. He joined her permanently in Cologne in 1982. She wrote an autobiography, Das Dorf und die Welt (The Village and the World). In her later years, Mies lived in a care facility as she was unable to recognize her husband, who visited her daily.

Mies died on 15 May 2023, at age 92. She is regarded as a pioneer of women's studies in Germany. She aimed not for a better position of women in the capitalist society, but for a new society.

Scholarly contributions

Anthropologist Danielle Léveillé characterized Mies' works as both "masterful" and "astonishing" in the way that she was able to link variables from the anti-colonial, anti-racist, ecology, feminist, and non-violence movements in a critique of policies that maintain an asymmetrical, hierarchic societal structure that creates domination and exploitation. This trend began in even her earliest works such as Indian Women in Patriarchy (1980) and The Lace Makers of Narsapur (1982), which evaluated her years in India, to later works like "Sexist and Racist Implications of New Reproductive Technology" (Alternatives, 1987). In these early works, Mies sought to evaluate how women's labor became hidden and created the perception that they were reliant upon a husband's income. She theorized that by eliminating pay for the work women performed, making them available at all times for labor, alienating them from society by keeping them in the home, giving them no job security, and eliminating their ability to contract or unionize, women lost agency. Their "housewifization" prevented women from being seen as producers or self-employed persons, allowing them to be exploited.

In the book Patriarchy and Accumulation on a World Scale Women in the International Division of Labour (1986), Mies evaluated the development of feminism, the sexual division of labor, and how violence shaped politics in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. In her analysis, the process of “housewifization” was based on the Western ideals of capital accumulation, meaning that by destroying women's autonomy and making them possessions, men were able to acquire productive capital and amass wealth. She saw family violence, not as a remnant of ancient society, but as a part of the processes to modernize. In the work, she noted that socialist development had created similar social structures and argued for creation of a utopian feminist society. The basis for work, in Mies's vision would be usefulness rather than accumulation, allowing consumers in overdeveloped places to fulfill their needs from producers in underdeveloped countries gaining worldwide relief from exploitation. Léveillé noted that while such a plan might work, its drawback was that it devalued things like music, flowers, and art, which while not essential or necessary to support human life provided therapeutic benefits.

In her work, Ecofeminism (1993) with Vandana Shiva, Mies used a Marxist approach to evaluate climate change, loss of diversity, multi-systemic failures, and resistance. They evaluated how production systems and accumulation caused dispossession of land and culture, leading to world hunger. The book was updated and republished in 2014, and translated into Spanish in 2016,concluding that the issues were worsening instead of improving. Evaluating the links between technology and science and cultural development, Jimena Andrieu and María Julia Eliosoff Ferrero, noted that Mies and Shiva pointed out that globalization has led to a crisis by commodifying and privatizing everything to increase production and profits, thereby reducing human freedoms. They argued that by placing nurturing of life and health as the focal point of economics, a balance between society, the economy, and the ecosystem is restored. The reissuance of the book sparked new debates on the roles of women in resistance movements in the Global South. With large sectors of the population unemployed and living in poverty, the turn toward subsistence and producing only goods that sustain life become questionable, according to Andrieu and Eliosoff.

Selected works

• Mies, Maria (1980). Indian Women and Patriarchy: Conflicts and Dilemmas of Students and Working Women. New Delhi: Concept Publishing Company. OCLC 7635521. (English translation of her thesis).
• Mies, Maria (1982). Lace Makers of Narsapur: Indian Housewives Produce for the World Market. London: Zed Books. ISBN 978-0-86232-032-4.
• Mies, Maria (1986). Patriarchy and Accumulation On A World Scale: Women in the International Division of Labour. London: Zed Books. ISBN 978-1-85649-735-0..
• Mies, Maria; Bennholdt-Thomsen, Veronika; Werlhof, Claudia von (1988). Women: The Last Colony. London: Zed Books. ISBN 978-0-86232-455-1.
• Mies, Maria; Shiva, Vandana (1993). Ecofeminism. London: Zed Books. ISBN 978-1-85649-156-3.
• Mies, Maria; Sittirak, Sinith (1998). The Daughters of Development: Women in a Changing Environment. London: Zed Books. ISBN 978-1-85649-588-2.
• Mies, Maria; Bennholdt-Thomsen, Veronika (2000). The Subsistence Perspective: Beyond the Globalised Economy. London: Zed Books. ISBN 978-1-85649-776-3.
• Mies, Maria (2010). The Village and the World: My Life, Our Times. North Melbourne, Australia: Spinifex Press. ISBN 978-1-876756-82-6.

External links

• Interview: Maria Mies (Köln 2018) on YouTube