María de Lourdes Arizpe Schlosser, habitually cited as Lourdes Arizpe, is a professor in anthropology. In 1964, she obtained a Certificate in French Studies from the University of Geneva; in 1965, she studied history at the National Autonomous University of Mexico. She obtained a license in ethnology in 1985 from the National School of Anthropology and History in Mexico. She obtained adoctorate in social anthropology from the London School of Economics and Political Science in the same year. In 2010, she would receive an honorary doctorate from the University of Florida in Gainesville.

Women's studies is an academic field that draws on feminist and interdisciplinary methods to place women's lives and experiences at the center of study, while examining social and cultural constructs of gender; systems of privilege and oppression; and the relationships between power and gender as they intersect with other identities and social locations such as race, sexual orientation, socio-economic class, and disability.