Maria Mies (German: [miːs]; 6 February 1931 – 15 May 2023) was a German professor of sociology, a Marxist feminist, an activist for women's rights, and an author. She came from a rural background in the Volcanic Eifel, and initially trained to be a teacher. After working for several years as a primary school teacher and qualifying as a high school instructor, she applied to the Goethe Institute, hoping to work in Africa or Asia. Assigned to a school in Pune, India, she discovered that while her male students took German courses to further their education, women for the most part took her classes to avoid marriage. Returning to study at the University of Cologne, she prepared her dissertation about contradictions of social expectations for women in India in 1971, earning her PhD the following year.

Mies was active in social movements from the late 1960s. Her activism was in favour of women's liberation and pacifism and against the Vietnam War and nuclear armaments. She taught sociology at the Cologne University of Applied Sciences and University of Frankfurt Institute for Social Research in the 1970s. Becoming aware of the lack of knowledge about women's history, she helped found and then gave lectures at the first women's shelter in Germany. In 1979, she began teaching women's studies at the International Institute of Social Studies in The Hague and founded a master's degree programme for women from developing countries, based on feminist theory.

Returning to Germany and the University of Applied Sciences in 1981, Mies became involved in the ecofeminist movement and in activism against genetic engineering and reproductive technology. She coined the phrase "housewifisation" for the processes that devalue women's labour and make it invisible. From the 1980s, she wrote extensively about the intersection between capitalism, patriarchy and colonialism. Mies was one of the first scholars to recognise the similarities between the socio-politico-economic positions held by women and colonised people. Her works theorised that women and colonised people's labour was devalued and exploited under capitalism, and studied the links between women's struggles for liberation and their broader struggles for social and environmental justice. One of her main concerns was the development of an alternative, feminist and decolonial approach in methodology and in economics. Her work, which included writing textbooks on the history of women's movements, has garnered international analysis and been translated into several languages.

Mies was born in Hillesheim, Germany, on 6 February 1931 to Johann and Gertrud Mies. She came from a rural background, growing up in a family of farmers in Auel, a village in the Vulkaneifel region of the Prussian Rhine Province (now in Rhineland-Palatinate). She was the seventh of twelve children, who all worked in the fields while they were pupils at the local school with only one classroom. Her mother's temperament was optimistic, but her father was a patriarchal figure and caused fear for the family members with his anger. They were raised as Catholic. She was the first student from her village to complete secondary school, which she attended in Gerolstein, while boarding with a family friend. She then started at the Regino-Gymnasium in Prüm, but the school was closed in September 1944 because of the war.

From 1947, she trained in Trier where she earned her abitur and then enrolled at the Pedagogical Academy in Koblenz to become a primary school teacher. In order to attend courses free of charge, she had to agree to teach for five years. After two years of study, she was assigned to primary schools in Auel and later in Worms. In 1950, Mies met a Pakistani Muslim tourist who was travelling in Germany. Zulfiquar would have a profound influence on her life, as their relationship developed into a romance. Rejecting his proposal of marriage on the basis of their incompatible religions, led her to serious study of religious doctrines and patriarchy. She chose to remain single for many years in order to maintain her independence. In 1955, she asked for a new placement and was sent to Trier, where she taught and also studied English. Mies passed her secondary teacher's examination in 1962 and was assigned to teach English and German in Morbach. Unwilling to be a secondary school teacher, she applied to the Goethe Institute and asked for a placement in Asia or the Middle East.

In 1963, Mies was accepted by the Goethe Institute to lecture in Pune, India, on a five-year teaching engagement. She taught German classes and discovered that while her male students enrolled to enhance their ability to study engineering, the majority of women took her courses to prolong their independence, as middle-class women were not required to marry until they had completed a bachelor's degree. One of her students, Chhaya Datar, later became head of the women's studies department at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences. Another, Saral Sarkar, later became her husband. In 1967, her mother became gravely ill and Mies asked to be released early from her contract. Soon after her return to Germany her mother made a full recovery, and Mies enrolled at the University of Cologne to study sociology under René König. Using her observations during her time in India about women's behaviour and the contradictions of social expectations for women, she prepared her PhD thesis Rollenkonflikte gebildeter indischer Frauen (Role Conflicts of Educated Indian Women) in 1971. She earned her doctorate in 1972, and her thesis was published the following year.

The late 1960s and early 1970s was a period of global protest and Mies became involved in activism. She participated in protests against the Vietnam War and nuclear armaments in the annual pacifist Easter March [de]. She joined Frauenforum Köln (Women's Forum Cologne), a local women's group tied to the women's liberation movement, which protested patriarchal structures and the devaluation of women. She participated in the Politische Nachtgebete [de] (political night-prayers), organised by Dorothee Sölle, which were aimed at questioning the status of women in the church. As she became more involved in protest and women's lack of equality, Mies became critical of religion and left the Catholic church. She taught at the newly founded Cologne University of Applied Sciences, before accepting a post in 1974 to teach at the University of Frankfurt Institute for Social Research. For three years, she presented seminars on the historic international women's movement, hoping she could convince the university to establish a women's study chair. In 1975, she attended the World Conference on Women in Mexico City and realised how little was known about women's history. In 1976, she married Sarkar, with the intent of having a visiting marriage allowing each to continue their careers in their respective countries. That year, she joined with other activists, mainly students of her classes, to found the women's shelter (Frauenhaus) in Cologne, one of the first of its kind in Germany. Mies lectured at the shelter, teaching women practical and political ways to combat violence. She returned to the University of Applied Sciences in 1977, but decided to conduct a research project in India the following year.

Mies arrived in India in 1978 to analyze rural subsistence production, meaning how domestic and farm labour, as well as cottage industry, allowed families to survive, but also led to the expansion of wealth for landlords and industries. She remained in India to the end of 1979 and spent time with her former pupil, Sarkar, who at the time was a lecturer at the Goethe Institute in Hyderabad. The results of her study of rural industry were published as The Lacemakers of Narsapur: Indian Housewives Produce for the World Market in 1982. She returned to Europe after accepting a position at the International Institute of Social Studies in The Hague. There, she created a master's degree programme for women from developing countries. To enable her students to complete the practical requirements, Mies made contact with local feminist groups to develop joint projects they could carry out. The administration decided not to renew the "Women and Development" programme for the next semester but Mies and her students successfully protested and the course continued to be offered. Because no textbooks at that time existed on the history of women's movements, particularly for the Global South, Mies and Kumari Jayawardena, a political scientist at the University of Colombo, wrote a series of texts for their students to use. Launching an international research project, she worked with scholars Mia Berden, Rhoda Reddock, and Saskia Wieringa to create a historiography of women's movements for Africa, Asia, the Caribbean, and Latin America with help from academics and activists from those countries.