List of feminist theorists

This is a necessarily incomplete list of significant feminist theorists and philosophers who have contributed to feminist theory. Any of these writers should have a little blurb explaining their contributions. Here, feminism includes the various historical and cultural strands of feminism and its related studies; see feminism, feminisms, queer theory, and gender studies.

The emphasis here is on people who have made significant contributions to theory, scholarship and ideas about women, gender, and sexuality. (In other words, people who made significant contributions through writing and theory. Activists and figures in the women's movement famous for being an early woman entrant in a particular profession should be listed only if they have also made, and are known in feminism for, a significant contribution to feminist thought and theory.

The purpose of this list is to provide an index to critical thinkers in the history of feminist thought.

pre-19th century

• Christine de Pizan, 1365-1430 (City of Ladies; an argument that women had reason and virtue)
• Olympe de Gouges, 1748-1793 (political rights; Declaration of the Rights of Woman and the Female Citizen (1791)))
• Mary Wollstonecraft, 1759-1797 (Vindication of the Rights of Woman; an argument for spiritual equality and equal access to education)

19th century

• Sarah Moore Grimké, 1792-1873 ("Letters on the Equality of the Sexes and the Condition of Women", 1837)
• Sojourner Truth, 1797-1883 ("Ain't I a Woman?" speech at 1851 Ohio Women's Rights Convention)
• John Stuart Mill, 1806-1873 (The Subjection of Women)
• Harriet Taylor Mill, 1807-1858 (Enfranchisement of Women)
• Concepción Arenal, 1820-1893 (like Susan B. Anthony & Marguerite Durand, a popular activist whose popular writings pushed feminist theory)
• Susan B. Anthony, 1820-1906 (US feminist activist who did many writings)
• Matilda Joslyn Gage, 1826-1898 (women's rights activist, historian, and theorist; known for her history of women scientists and inventors; co-wrote History of Woman Suffrage and The Woman's Bible with Stanton; the Matilda effect named after her)
• Victoria Woodhull, 1838-1927 (famed for her advocacy of free love)
• Elizabeth Cady Stanton, 1815-1902 (Seneca Falls Declaration of Sentiments (1848); History of Woman Suffrage; The Woman's Bible)

early-mid 20th century

• Simone de Beauvoir, 1908-1986 (Le Deuxième Sexe (1949))
• Marguerite Durand, 1864-1936 (founded La Fronde (1897); like Susan B. Anthony, primarily an activist, but explored feminism in her journalistic and popular writings)
• Betty Friedan, 1921-2006 (The Feminine Mystique (1963))
• Virginia Woolf, 1882-1941 ("A Room of One's Own" (1929))

1960s-70s

• Gloria Evangelina Anzaldúa, 1942-2004
• Rosa Braidotti
• Susan Brownmiller, 1935 ("Against Our Will: Men, Women, and Rape" (1975))
• Hélèe Cixous, 1937- (one of the three founding "French feminist" theorists with Cristeva & Irigaray; particularly focused on psychoanalytic theory/deconstructionism; coined with Irigaray the term "phallogocentrism"; wrote "Le Rire de la Medusa" ("The Laugh of the Medusa" (1975)) which argued against phallogocentrism and called for polymorphous perversity.
• Angela Davis
• Mary Daly
• Christine Delphy
• Shulamith Firestone
• Michel Foucault, 1926-1984 (The History of Sexuality, 1976-84, particularly)
• Jo Freeman
• Marilyn French
• Germaine Greer, 1939-
• bell hooks
• Sheila Jeffreys
• Julia Kristeva, 1941- (cultural theory/semiotics/deconstructionism; one of the major "French feminists"; "Women's Time" in New Maladies of the Soul (1993); theory of "abjection" in Powers of Horror: An Essay in Abjection; intertextuality theory of literary criticism coined in 1966)
• Audre Lorde
• Luce Irigaray, 1930- (French feminism; Speculum of the Other Woman (1974); This Sex Which Is Not One (1977))
• Catherine MacKinnon
• Kate Millett
• Cherrie Moraga
• Robin Morgan
• Adrienne Rich
• Dale Spender
• Alice Walker
• Monique Wittig

late 20th century

• Kate Bornstein, 1948- (Gender Outlaw (1997); My Gender Workbook (1994))
• Judith Butler
• Carol Gilligan
• Donna Haraway
• Joanna Russ
• Gayle Rubin
• Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, 1950-
• Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, 1942 ("Can the Subaltern Speak?"; founding text of postcolonialism)