Women in philosophy


Women have made significant contributions to philosophy throughout the history of the discipline. Ancient examples of female philosophers include Maitreyi, Gargi Vachaknavi, Hipparchia of Maroneia and Arete of Cyrene. Some women philosophers were accepted during the medieval and modern eras, but none became part of the Western canon until the 20th and 21st century, when some sources began to accept philosophers like Simone Weil, Susanne Langer, G.E.M. Anscombe, Hannah Arendt, and Simone de Beauvoir into the canon.

Despite women participating in philosophy throughout history, there exists a gender imbalance in academic philosophy. This can be attributed to implicit biases against women. Women have had to overcome workplace obstacles like sexual harassment or having their work overlooked or stolen by men. Racial and ethnic minorities are underrepresented in the field of philosophy as well. Minorities and Philosophy, the American Philosophical Association, and the Society for Women in Philosophy are all organizations trying to fix the gender imbalance in academic philosophy.
In the early 1800s, some colleges and universities in the UK and US began admitting women, producing more female academics. Nevertheless, U.S. Department of Education reports from the 1990s indicate that few women ended up in philosophy, and that philosophy is one of the least gender-proportionate fields in the humanities. Women make up as little as 17% of philosophy faculty in some studies.
In 2014, Inside Higher Education described the philosophy "...discipline's own long history of misogyny and sexual harassment" of women students and professors. Jennifer Saul, a professor of philosophy at the University of Sheffield, stated in 2015 that women are "...leaving philosophy after being harassed, assaulted, or retaliated against."
In the early 1990s, the Canadian Philosophical Association claimed that there is gender imbalance and gender bias in the academic field of philosophy. In June 2013, a US sociology professor stated that "out of all recent citations in four prestigious philosophy journals, female authors comprise just 3.6 percent of the total." The editors of the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy have raised concerns about the underrepresentation of women philosophers, and they require editors and writers to ensure they represent the contributions of women philosophers. According to Eugene Sun Park, "hilosophy is predominantly white and predominantly male. This homogeneity exists in almost all aspects and at all levels of the discipline." Susan Price argues that the "canon remains dominated by white males—the discipline that... still hews to the myth that genius is tied to gender." According to Saul, philosophy, the oldest of the humanities, is also the malest. While other areas of the humanities are at or near gender parity, philosophy remains more overwhelmingly male than even mathematics.

History

While there were women philosophers since the earliest times, and some were accepted as philosophers during their lives, very few woman philosophers have entered the philosophical Western canon. Historians of philosophy are faced with two main problems. The first being the exclusion of women philosophers from history and philosophy texts, which leads to a lack of knowledge about women philosophers among philosophy students. The second problem deals with what the canonical philosophers had to say about philosophy and women's place in it. In the past twenty-five years there has been an exponential increase in feminist writing about the history of philosophy and what has been considered the philosophical canon.
In the May 13, 2015 issue of The Atlantic, Susan Price notes that even though Kant's first work in 1747 cites Émilie Du Châtelet, a philosopher who was a "...scholar of Newton, religion, science, and mathematics", "her work won't be found in the 1,000-plus pages of the new edition of The Norton Introduction to Philosophy." The Norton Introduction does not name a female philosopher until the book begins to cover the mid-20th century. Scholars argue that women philosophers are also absent from the "...other leading anthologies used in university classrooms." Price states that university philosophy anthologies do not usually mention 17th century women philosophers such as Margaret Cavendish, Anne Conway, and Lady Damaris Masham. Price argues that the philosophical "...canon remains dominated by white males—the discipline that some say still hews to the myth that genius is tied to gender." Amy Ferrer, executive director of the American Philosophical Association, states that "...women have been systematically left out of the canon, and that women coming in have not been able to see how much influence women have had in the field." The Encyclopedia of Philosophy, which as published in 1967, had "...articles on over 900 philosophers, did not include an entry for Wollstonecraft, Arendt or de Beauvoir. "hese women philosophers were scarcely even marginal" to the canon set out at the time.
In the Aeon essay "First women of philosophy" in December 2018, the global historian of ideas Dag Herbjørnsrud writes about the many women philosophers of the Global South, and concludes: "Philosophy was once a woman's world, ranging across Asia, Africa and Latin America. It's time to reclaim that lost realm." Herbjørnsrud argues that women and philosophers of color were excluded from the philosophical canon by Kant, Hegel and their supporters.

Ancient philosophy

Some of the earliest philosophers were women, such as Hipparchia of Maroneia, Arete of Cyrene and Aspasia of Miletus. Aspasia appears in the philosophical writings of Plato, Xenophon, Aeschines Socraticus and Antisthenes. Some scholars argue that Plato was impressed by her intelligence and wit and based his character Diotima in the Symposium on her. Socrates attributes to the Diotima of Mantinea his lessons in the art of Eros. Plato's final views on women are highly contested, but the Republic suggests that Plato thought women to be equally capable of education, intellectual vision, and rule of the city.

Ancient eastern philosophy

In ancient philosophy in Asia, women made many vital contributions. In the oldest text of the Upanishads, c. 700 BCE, the female philosophers Gargi and Maitreyi are part of the philosophical dialogues with the sage Yajnavalkya. Ubhaya Bharati and Akka Mahadevi are other known female thinkers in the Indian philosophical tradition. In China, Confucius hailed Jing Jiang of Lu as being wise and an example for his students, while Ban Zhao wrote several vital historical and philosophical texts. In Korea, Im Yunjidang were among the most notable women philosophers during the enlightened mid-Chosŏn era. Among notable female Muslim philosophers are Rabia of Basra, A'ishah al-Ba'uniyyah of Damascus, and Nana Asma’u from the Sokoto Caliphate of today's Nigeria.
Some notable female philosophers of this era include:
  • Ban Zhao
  • Xie Daoyun
  • Gargi Vachaknavi

    Ancient western philosophy

In ancient Western philosophy, while academic philosophy was typically the domain of male philosophers such as Plato and Aristotle, female philosophers such as Hipparchia of Maroneia, Arete of Cyrene and Aspasia of Miletus were active during this period. Unfortunately, we don't know how many female authors ever existed in Ancient Greece, the Hellenistic period or the Roman age, as most of the ancient literature is forever lost.
In the Roman Empire, empresses and female members of the aristocracy, or knights class, were frequently protectors of male and female artists. Hypatia was a mathematician, astronomer, and philosopher in Egypt, then a part of the Eastern Roman Empire. She was the head of the Neoplatonic school at Alexandria, where she taught philosophy and astronomy.
Some notable female philosophers of this era include:
  • Theano of Croton
  • Aristoclea of Delphi
  • Perictione
  • Sosipatra of Ephesus
  • Nicarete of Megara
  • Cornelia
  • Catherine of Alexandria
  • Phintys
  • Ptolemais of Cyrene
  • Aesara of Lucania
  • Diotima of Mantinea
  • Pompeia Plotina

    Medieval philosophy

dates from the fall of the Western Roman Empire in the 5th century AD to the Renaissance in the 16th century. In this age, it was common as well for prominent women belonging to the aristocracy to defend and finance intellectuals.
Some notable woman philosophers of this era include:
  • Aedesia of Alexandria
  • Heloïse of Argenteuil, French philosopher, advocate of adequate education for nuns
  • Dobrodeia of Kiev
  • St. Hildegard of Bingen
  • Catherine of Siena
  • Christine de Pizan
  • Tullia d'Aragona
  • Moderata Fonte, critic of religion, feminist
  • Lucrezia Marinella

    Modern philosophy

The 17th century marks the beginning of the modern philosophy era, which ended in the early 20th century. During the 17th century, various women philosophers argued for the importance of education for women and two women philosophers influenced René Descartes and during the early part of the 18th century, two women philosophers commented on John Locke's philosophy. Laura Bassi was the first woman to earn a university chair in a scientific field. Olympe de Gouges demanded that French women be given the same rights as men, a position also taken by Judith Sargent Murray in her essay "On the Equality of the Sexes" and Mary Wollstonecraft in her essay A Vindication of the Rights of Woman. During the 19th century, Harriet Martineau criticized the state of women's education and Harriet Taylor Mill, Sarah Margaret Fuller and Antoinette Brown Blackwell called for women's rights. Charlotte Perkins Gilman argued that women were oppressed by an androcentric culture. Near the start of the 20th century, Mary Whiton Calkins was the first woman to become president of the American Philosophical Association. Women thinkers such as Emma Goldman, an anarchist, and
Rosa Luxemburg, a Marxist theorist, are known for their political views. Influential contemporary philosophers include Edith Stein, Susanne Langer, Hannah Arendt, Simone de Beauvoir, Elizabeth Anscombe, Mary Midgley, Philippa Foot, Mary Warnock, Julia Kristeva, Patricia Churchland Martha Nussbaum and Susan Haack.