The Mothers of South African Anthropology

The role of women in academia is a topic that has been routinely overlooked in previous decades. This review article discusses the contributions of three recent monographs that are attempting to correct this tendency, Inside African Anthropology: Monica Wilson and Her Interpreters, Dorothea Bleek: A Life of Scholarship, and Pioneers of the Field: South Africa’s Women Anthropologists. These works have helped not only to begin dialogues about the fundamental efforts of female anthropologists in shaping South African intellectual history and anthropology, but also to show how this greater clarity is necessary to finally correct some of the lingering imbalance that remains from prior draconian racial rhetoric.