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

• Friedrich Engels, 1820-1895 ("The Origin of the Female, Private Property, and the State" (1884); early assessment of political economy of monogamy)
• 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 (This Bridge Called My Back (1981) with Cherríe Moraga)
• Susan Brownmiller, 1935 ("Against Our Will: Men, Women, and Rape" (1975); Take Back the Night]] movement theorist)
• Nancy Chodorow, 1944- (feminist psychoanalytic theory)
• 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.
• Patricia Hill Collins, 1948- (Black Feminist Thought (1990); Fighting Words (1998))
• Angela Davis, 1944- (Women, Race and Class (1981))
• Mary Daly, 1928- (Gyn/Ecology (1990))
• Christine Delphy, 1941- (materialist feminism)
• Andrea Dworkin, 1946-2005 (Pornography: Men Possessing Women (1979); Woman Hating (1974; literary criticism); Right-Wing Women (1983); Intercourse (1987) (the source for people who like to claim that Dworkin said all heterosexual sex is rape))
• Anne Fausto-Sterling, Myths of Gender (examined essentialist biological claims about sex and gender)
• Shulamith Firestone, 1945- (The Dialectic of Sex (1970))
• Michel Foucault, 1926-1984 (The History of Sexuality, 1976-84, particularly)
• Jo Freeman, 1945- ("The Tyranny of Structurelessness")
• Marilyn French, 1929- (The War Against Women (1992))
• Germaine Greer, 1939- (The Female Eunuch (1970))
• Shere Hite, 1942- (female sexuality; The Hite Report on Female Sexuality, 1976)
• bell hooks (Ain't I a Woman?: Black Women and Feminism (1981))
• Sarah Blaffer Hrdy (feminist critiques of science & sexism within scientific literature)
• Luce Irigaray, 1930- (French feminism; Speculum of the Other Woman (1974); This Sex Which Is Not One (1977))
• Sheila Jeffreys, 1948- (The Spinster and Her Enemies (1985))
• Evelyn Fox Keller (feminist critiques of science)
• Anne Koedt, "The Myth of the Vaginal Orgasm"
• 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, 1934-1992 (Zami: A New Spelling of My Name (1983) (a "biomythography); Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches (1984))
• Catherine MacKinnon, 1946- (legal theorist; anti-pornography & anti-sex discrimination; Feminism Unmodified (1987))
• Kate Millett, 1934- (Sexual Politics (1970), significant text in feminist literary criticism)
• Cherríe Moraga, 1952- (This Bridge Called My Back with Gloria Anzaldúa)
• Robin Morgan, 1941- (Sisterhood Is Powerful anthology; "Goodbye To All That" (1970) essay critiquing sexism of 1960s/70s American Left movement)
• Adrienne Rich, 1929- (Of Woman Born: Motherhood as Experience and Institution (1976); "Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence")
• Sheila Rowbotham, 1943- (socialist feminism; Hidden from History: 300 Years of Women's Oppression and the Fight Against It (1973); Woman, Resistance and Revolution (1973))
• Barbara Smith, 1946- (African American lesbian feminism; "Toward a Black Feminist Consciousness" (1982) in All the Women Are White, All the Blacks Are Men, But Some of Us Are Brave: Black Women's Studies (ed. with Gloria T. Hull & Patricia Bell Scott, 1982); Home Girls: A Black Feminist Anthology (1983, ed.))
• Valerie Solanas, SCUM Manifesto
• Dale Spender, 1943- (feminist literary critic; Women of Ideas and What Men Have Done to Them)
• Alice Walker, 1944- ("womanism", e.g., In Search of Our Mothers' Gardens (1983); largely responsible for modern reclamation of Zora Neale Hurston)
• Monique Wittig, 1935-2003 (materialist feminism; Corps Lesbien (The lesbian body) (1973))

late 20th century

• Kate Bornstein, 1948- (Gender Outlaw (1997); My Gender Workbook (1994))
• Judith Butler, 1956- (Gender Trouble, 1990)
• Lillian Faderman (lesbian history; Surpassing the Love of Men (1981); Chloe Plus Olivia: An Anthology of Lesbian Literature from the 17th Century to the Present (1994))
• Carol Gilligan, 1936- (In a Different Voice: Psychological Theory and Women's Development (1982) (critique of models of ethics and sociology based on studies of boys and men)
• Deborah Tannen, 1945- (difference feminism; "You Just Don't Understand" (1990), an argument that inherent gender distinctions in communication patterns exist)
• Judith Halberstam, 1961- (Female Masculinity (1998))
• Donna Haraway, 1944- (A Cyborg Manifesto)
• Joanna Russ, 1937- How To Suppress Women's Writing)
• Gayle Rubin, 1949- ("The Traffic in Women: Notes on the 'Political Economy' of Sex" (1975); "Thinking Sex: Notes for a Radical Theory of the Politics of Sexuality" (1982))
• Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, 1950- (Epistemology of the Closet (1990); Between Men: English Literature and Male Homosocial Desire (1985))
• Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, 1942 ("Can the Subaltern Speak?"; founding text of postcolonialism)