Maria Mies (born 1931) is a professor of sociology and author of several feminist books, including Indian Women and Patriarchy (1980), Patriarchy and Accumulation on a World Scale (1986), and (with Bennholdt-Thomsen and von Werlhof) Women: The Last Colony (1988).
She is Professor of Sociology at the Cologne University of Applied Sciences,[1] which is a Fachhochschule in Cologne, Germany. She worked for many years in India. In 1979 she established the Women and Development programme at the Institute of Social Studies in The Hague, Netherlands. She has been active in the women's movement and in women's studies since the late 1960s. She has published several books and many articles on feminist, ecological and Third World issues. One of her main concerns is the development of an alternative approach in methodology and in economics. Having retired from teaching in 1993, she continues to be active in the women's and other social movements. She has published a book on the Multilateral Agreement on Investment and, with Veronika Bannholdt, has written a book on the subsistence perspective (from Patriarchy and Accumulation on a World Scale).