Dear Estabraq,

If your work includes Anthropology, you would need to start with a question/hypothesis about societies that you are testing across cultures using holistic models. In other words, you would need to start with a question about certain eco-systems and/or technologies pattern gender roles and then look for the gender roles that are created in those types of societies, trying to prove the correlation rather than just start with a category of "influential female figures" whatever that means ("influential" will depend on each society and you will have to know what is important to that society and what is being "influenced" and how it impacts the society, which suggests that if your approach is already backwards from an anthropological perspective because you are already projecting assumptions). Information on this has already been collected for decades by others in gender studies, unfortunately with no real analysis, and in what you could call "literature" depending on how you are defining literature (a lot of it is mythology about how societies work) but this is easy to find. If you are using literature that meets the classic definition that is linked with anthropology, you would have to choose literature that is a "social experiment" that tries to test what is possible by changing some variables. For that, I suggest you turn to Ursula Kroeber LeGuin, the feminist science fiction author who was the daughter of Anthropologist Alfred Kroeber. Other forms of literature are used to reveal what is taboo and is not allowed to be presented in non-fiction and you may want to look at that to reveal the myths that are created in certain societies, but to do that you would also have to pick a society and a time and an hypothesis about the myths that certain societies would want to create and why (for example, our society uses feminism as a way to destroy cultural rights and to draw attention away from issues like corporate and military-security state power and also to undermine science, so you could easily test that hypothesis).

Otherwise, it sounds like the Anthropology you are doing is misnamed and is actually Anthroposphism, which is the humanities approach to human societies that looks at ideological and religious beliefs and you need to start with that track. If you are looking at how feminism is used today in a way that defies the actual goals of gender equity and international law to protect cultural diversity, in combination with the ideology of neo-liberalism that actually reinforces the inequities that feminism tried to address (reinforcing the role of women as anti-science, low-skilled, and focusing on literature and domesticity), there are some non-fiction sources but they are hard to find. I have done a bit of analysis of this (my articles on a "gender indicator" and "feminism and development studies"). I also suggest that you look at some of Brooks Duncan's work that you may be able to find on-line ("Every Woman for Himself: A Male Feminist Reconsiders"). It sounds like this is what your program has been doing to you without your realizing it, given how you are framing your question.

Best,

David Lempert, Ph.D., J.D., M.B.A., E.D. (Hon.)

Women, Race, Class” by Angela Davis vs “Mapping the Margins” by Kimberle Crenshaw

Daniel, Douglas A. Tactical Factors in the Spanish Conquest of the Aztecs. Anthropological Quarterly 65, no. 4 (1992): 187-94.

Cypess, Sandra Messinger. “Feminism, Nation, and Myth: La Malinche.” In “Mother” Malinche and Allegories of Gender, Ethnicity, and National Identity in Mexico, ed. Rolando Romero and Amanda Nolacea Harris, 14-26. Houston, Texas: Arte Público Press, 2005

important feminist depends on your interests/perspective there are many influencers (:

If by twinning anthropology (or cross-cultural studies more generally) and literature, you would like suggestions on such topics as (1) the literary turn in anthropology, (2) anthropology and fiction, and (3) the rhetoric and poetics of anthropology, I can send you reading lists. Ditto for (4) anthropology and feminism, which is another universe to explore. Caution: my reading in these areas is not very up to date as I don't teach them any more.

You may look at these;

1. Adu-Poku, S. (2001). Envisioning (black) male feminism: A cross-cultural perspective. Journal of Gender Studies, 10(2), 157-167.

2. Rosaldo, M. Z. (1980). The use and abuse of anthropology: reflections on feminism and cross-cultural understanding. Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, 5(3), 389-417.

3. Harper-Dorton, K. V., & Lantz, J. (2007). Cross-cultural practice: Social work with diverse populations. Lyceum Books.

4.Schueller, M. J. (2011). Cross-cultural identification, neoliberal feminism, and Afghan women. Genders, (53).

5.Chen, C. N., Lai, M., & Tarn, D. D. (1999). Feminism orientation, product attributes and husband-wife decision dominance: A Taiwan-Japan cross-cultural study. Journal of Global Marketing, 12(3), 23-39.

Check this out on Amazon

Feminist Anthropology: A Reader https://www.amazon.com/dp/1405101962/ref=cm_sw_r_other_apa_glc_i_49CB89702ZCWJ94ZE7CF

this book may help you. It is about feminism in a lot different cultures.