Mary Daly (born 1928) was considered the foremost feminist theoretician and philosopher in the United States.

Mary Daly was born in Schenectady, New York, on October 16, 1928. Educated in Catholic schools, she received her first Ph.D. from St. Mary's College/Notre Dame University in 1954. Between 1959 and 1966 she taught philosophy in Junior Year Abroad programs in Fribourg, Switzerland. She also received doctorates in theology and philosophy from the University of Fribourg in 1963 and 1965. After 1966 she was a member of the theology department of Boston College.

Daly was in the forefront of American feminist thinking, both in terms of her early appearance as a feminist writer and in terms of the depth, originality, and power of her work. Her first feminist book, The Church and the Second Sex (1968), was published at the very beginning of the women's liberation movement that emerged in the late 1960s. In that work Daly both documented...