It’s seemingly challenging to be a woman in philosophy. With a stereotype of being over-emotional and lacking rationality, the typical female philosopher fails to succeed in the necessary archetype of a true thinker. One blog discusses the fundamental aspects of philosophy as being dangerous for women. A unique attribute of philosophy is that it relies on the mind for conclusions, as opposed to empirical evidence. Yet this catalyses a gender imbalance where women’s minds are not given the same grace as men’s. Their ideas are repeatedly discredited, their works invalidated, and their experiences in this field are rife with gaslighting and mistrust due to their gender. Thus, women have been time and time again, segregated from the world of academia, leading to an injustice in educational access.
Women are not ‘adapted’ to the higher sciences or philosophy, Hegel argues, and they lack the rationality needed for a field dominated by considerate thought. Obviously, a notion most would disagree with nowadays, yet women in philosophy are still treated as if this is the case. With a disappointingly large proportion of these notable male philosophers perpetuating these negative stereotypes on women, this notion has largely prohibited women from being taken seriously in philosophy, forcing them into the shadows of disregard, leaving their ideas and perspectives inertly ignored.
As a female philosophy students is disheartening to consistently study male perspectives on topics that are said to be, in this day and age, equally as accessible for women. But I’m not sure that’s the case. Despite the obvious prohibitions to education for women around the world, the number of female undergraduates has been steadily increasing, frequently outweighing male students in the same institutions. Though this does not reflect the curriculum we are provided with. Despite the best efforts from considerate institutions, there is the glaring problem that women are simply not listened to or published on the same level as men in this field, making it harder for their works and perspectives to be shared. This creates an illusion of inordinate intellectualism for women, hiding the successful female philosophers away from being heard.
Given this, I think it’s necessary to explore ways in which women have contributed to the field of philosophy despite this androcentric dominance.
In many ways, the female perspective expanded the field of ethics to consider motivations for human behaviour that had not been discussed before, bein largely beneficial for women, and in part, all humans who lead with their heart rather than head. Care ethics redefines systematic bias to explore the feminine perspective, moving away from the notion that had been so ardently persisted by cosmopolitan ethical theories. As an ethical theory, care ethics focuses on the significance of relationships and emotions in ethical decisions, rather than logic or rational decision-making. Though this doesn’t mean this approach isn’t rational, instead it understands the ways we interact with others through placing importance on these relationships and understanding how that may influence the decisions we make.
For example, in moral dilemmas, we may feel more inclined to favour our family or friends or have more emotional responses when it comes to considering how people we know may be affected, as opposed to strangers. This doesn’t mean we don’t care about others, but it places more of an emphasis on why we care for those we love, and why this is okay, and not immoral, to have partiality towards them, reversing the weaponisation of emotions in moral decisions.
This has been largely attributed to the work of many female philosophers, such as Virginia Held or Joan Tronto, who through their work have demonstrated how women. By contextualising decision making, showing how it is often grounded in gender roles and the stereotypes which perpetuate them, helps us better understand society through this lens of love and relationships.
In fact, on the whole, women have greatly contributed to essentially every facet of philosophy. Martha Nussbaum, Christine Korsgaard and Philippa Foot have forwarded the field of ethics in other ways. Susan Stebbing and Susan Haack have tackled analytical philosophy and logic. Simone de Beauvoir and Mary Astell have provided brave intellectual disputes on many strongly held beliefs, enriching philosophical discourse. Yet many of their works are unheard of, less famous than their male counterparts, despite often representing more widely held beliefs. None of these thinkers is marginal in substance but marginalised in recognition. It is, as Eileen O’Neill said in 1997, that women’s work is seemingly written in invisible ink, vanished from history, diminishing the feminine perspective from understanding our world.
Interestingly, important fields of medical ethics, philosophy of pregnancy, discussions on abortion and many other areas of political and social philosophy were introduced by women, and likely would not have been otherwise, given that most men do not experience these. This shows how largely even the presence of women in our society has widened the world of metaphysics and epistemological questions, progressing the field simply through our existence.
As women, we’ve always been here, just not necessarily listened to. It’s a frustrating conclusion that women’s work only reaches the forefront of our minds when they create something truly sensational, rather than simple, often ridiculously stupid thoughts like those of male philosophers. Evidently, the inclusion of the female mind in philosophy has fast-tracked the field in an unprecedented sense.
There’s a deep irony here, given that philosophy seeks to be progressive and adopt alternative perspectives yet fails to question its own gendered presuppositions about rationality and thought. For a field that has so ardently claimed to seek answers and truth about the society we live in, it has far too often silenced half of those capable of discovering it. When women are finally listened to and given the platform to speak, philosophy does not lose its rationality or rigour, but instead, discovers the depths in adopting the feminine perspective. The history of philosophy may have been told by men, but it has always been thoughtfully crafted by women, too, there in the shadows, shaping our knowledge of the world.