Maxine Deirdre Molyneux CMG (born 24 May 1948 in Karachi, Pakistan) is a British sociologist whose work focuses on the women's movement.
Her focus is women's movements, and her central question is how they and the state influence each other.
Interests and law are the categories under which she examines the changeable and shapeable relationship of the gender order and the state.
She wants to bring back the state and the political subject into the thinking on modernisation, democratisation and development.
[1][4] Molyneux has written extensively in the fields of political sociology and gender and development studies.