Phyllis Mary Kaberry (17 September 1910 – 31 October 1977) was a social anthropologist who dedicated her work to the study of women in various societies.

[3] Kaberry attended the University of Sydney in 1930, graduating with a BA in English and philosophy with an emphasis on Latin and history in 1933, and a MA in anthropology in 1934, with first-class honors.

Elkin, a firm believer that female anthropologists were able to give a unique and beneficial perspective of women in various societies – a subject neglected during this time.

She later renewed her Melanesian interests after 1939 when she travelled to New Guinea to study the social organisation among the Abelam people of the Sepik District.

Her advisor, Elkin, suggested her fieldwork reside in the Kimberley region of Western Australia to study the cultures of the Aboriginal groups there.

Elkin was a large advocate for the humane treatment and preservation of the native Australian populations – his views driven by his awareness of poor living conditions, maltreatment, and the gradual erasing of their traditional beliefs and values.

Conducting research among cattle and mission stations, she encountered language barriers and constant resettlement due to seasonal migrations – hence a mobile lifestyle.

Adopting a participant observation approach, Kaberry shifted between multiple groups of people, becoming deeply involved with the daily lifestyles of the women.

During the dry season, Kaberry resided in the cattle and mission stations collecting genealogies by interviewing women from various camps.

Over the roughly three years that she studied the Aboriginal society of the Kimberley region, she focused on kinship, religion, the economic and social organisation of women, as well as the influence of European contact.

At the time of publication, anthropology was widely male dominated, and thus her book received great amounts of criticism for suggesting that women were equal to that of men and possessed their own value of sacredness.

At this time, Aboriginal women were seen as purely erotic beings or "domesticated cows" and were thought to have little influence in cultural development, devoid of a sacred life with their institutions defined as inferior to those of males.

It was with the object of making a more specific study of the position of women in an aboriginal community, that at the suggestion of Professor Elkin, I carried out research in North-West Australia [...] In its original form my material was presented as a thesis for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy at the London School of Economics in 1938; but since then it has been revised and abridged and the title changed to one that sums up my attempt to portray aboriginal woman as she really is – a complex social personality, having her own prerogatives, duties, problems, beliefs, rituals, and point of view; making the adjustments that the social, local, and totemic organisation require of her, and at the same time exercising a certain freedom of choice in matters affecting her own interests and desires [...] Nevertheless they possess totems, have spiritual affiliations with the sacred past, and perform their own sacred rites from which the men are excluded [...] we have no grounds for assuming on the data now available, that the men represent the sacred element in the community and the women the profane element.

[3] Kaberry spent close to a total of forty-six months in Bamenda between 1945 and 1963 partly in collaboration with Sally Chilver.

Her passion and dedication towards erasing the misconceptions of the value of women within different societies has greatly benefited the future of the anthropological field of study.

Her work has influenced future generations of anthropologists, including Sandy Toussaint of the University of Western Australia, and author of Phyllis Kaberry and Me.