Women in philosophy

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v t e

Women have made significant contributions to philosophy throughout the history of the discipline.

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. Racial and ethnic minorities are underrepresented in the field of philosophy as well. Minorities and Philosophy (MAP), 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

While there were women philosophers since the earliest times, and some were accepted as philosophers during their lives, almost no woman philosophers have entered the philosophical Western canon.^[1] 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.^[11]

In the May 13, 2015 issue of The Atlantic, Susan Price notes that even though Kant's first work in 1747 cites

Some of the earliest philosophers were women, such as

• Theano of Croton
  (6th century BC)
• Aristoclea of Delphi
  (6th century BC)
• Sosipatra of Ephesus
  (4th century AD)
• Nicarete of Megara (flourished around 300 BC)
• Catherine of Alexandria (282-305 AD)
• Ptolemais of Cyrene (3rd century BC)
• Aesara of Lucania
  (3rd century BC)
• Diotima of Mantinea (appears in Plato's Symposium)
• Ban Zhao (c. 45–116 AD)^D2
• Xie Daoyun (before 340 AD – after 399 AD)
• Gargi Vachaknavi
  (7th century BC)

Medieval philosophy

• Aedesia of Alexandria (5th century AD)
• Heloïse of Argenteuil (c. 1100-1164), French philosopher, advocate of adequate education for nuns^[24]
• St. Hildegard of Bingen
  (1098-1179)
• Catherine of Siena (1347–1380)
• Christine de Pizan (1364-c.1430) ^[25]
• Tullia d'Aragona (c. 1510 – 1556)
• Moderata Fonte (1555–1592), critic of religion, feminist

Modern philosophy

The 17th century marks the beginning of the

• Marie de Gournay (1565–1645) was a critic of religion, proto-feminist, translator and novelist who insisted that women should be educated.
• Anna Maria van Schurman (1607–1678) was a multilinguist known for her defense of female education.
• dualism
  , or the mind being separate from the body, and his theories regarding communication between the mind and body.
• Margaret Cavendish (1623–1673) was a philosopher and writer who addressed gender, power, manners, scientific methods, and philosophy.
• rationalist philosophy, with hallmarks of gynocentric concerns and patterns, and in that sense it was unique among seventeenth-century systems.^[26]
• Gabrielle Suchon (1632-1703), French philosopher of education^[25]
• proto-feminist
  , and advocate for women's education.
• educational opportunities for women, which earned her the title of "first English feminist."^[27]
  Her most well known books outline her plan to establish a new type of educational institution for women.

• Catharine Trotter Cockburn (1679–1749) published her first major philosophical work, A Defence of Mr. Lock[e]'s An Essay Concerning Human Understanding in 1702, at the age of 23. Much of the scholarly interest in her writing centres on gender studies.
• Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica. She criticized John Locke’s philosophy and emphasizes the necessity of the verification of knowledge through experience. She also theorized about free will and on the way to do metaphysics.^[28]
• Laura Bassi (1711–1778) was an Italian philosopher and physicist who was the first woman in the world to earn a university chair in a scientific field of studies. She received a doctoral degree from the University of Bologna in May 1732,^[29] the third academic qualification ever bestowed on a woman by a university,^[30] and the first woman to earn a professorship in physics at a university in Europe.^[31] She was the first woman to be offered an official teaching position at a university in Europe.^[30]
• Catharine Macaulay (1731–1791) was an English historian and writer. She attacked Edmund Burke's Thoughts on the Cause of the Present Discontents, calling it "a poison...".^[32] In her 1790 Letters on Education, she argued along the lines that Mary Wollstonecraft would do in 1792, that the apparent weakness of women was due to their mis-education.^[33]
• Im Yunjidang (1721-1793) was a Korean writer and neo-Confucian philosopher.
• abolitionist writings reached a large audience. She was an early feminist who demanded that French women be given the same rights as French men. In her Declaration of the Rights of Woman and of the Female Citizen (1791), she challenged the practice of male authority
  and the notion of male–female inequality.
• Judith Sargent Murray (1751–1820) was an early American advocate for women's rights, an essayist, playwright, poet, and letter writer. She was one of the first American proponents of the idea of the equality of the sexes—that women, like men, had the capability of intellectual accomplishment and should be able to achieve economic independence. Among many other influential pieces, her landmark essay "On the Equality of the Sexes" paved the way for new thoughts and ideas proposed by other feminist writers of the century. The essay predated Mary Wollstonecraft's A Vindication of the Rights of Woman which was published in 1792.^[34]
• Mary Wollstonecraft (1759–1797) was an English writer, philosopher, and advocate of women's rights. She is regarded as one of the founding feminist philosophers. In A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792), her most famous and influential work,^[35] she argues that women are not naturally inferior to men, but appear to be only because they lack education. She suggests that both men and women should be treated as rational beings and imagines a social order founded on reason.

19th century

• Nana Asmaʼu (1793-1864) was a Nigerian poet and political writer, who supported the education of women.
• Marianna Florenzi (1802–1870) was an Italian marchioness (in Italian marchesa). Née Marianna Bacinetti, she was a writer, philosopher and translator of philosophical works. She was also known by her married name of Marianna Florenzi Waddington. A daughter of count Pietro Bacinetti of Ravenna and countess Laura Rossi di Lugo, she had a literary education and devoted herself to reading philosophical works, becoming the female ideal of an educated woman of the time and a witty hostess of cultural gatherings and salons. She was one of the first female students, studying natural sciences at the University of Perugia in the first half of the 19th century. She translated Leibniz's Monadology into Italian and also promoted the spread of works by Kant, Spinoza and Schelling (whose work Bruno she also translated) in Italian. Politically she supported Italy's national-movement and in 1850 published Some reflections on socialism and communism, which (like many of her other works) ended up on the church's Index Librorum Prohibitorum. She was for forty years a lover and close friend of Ludwig I of Bavaria, whom she visited more than thirty times. He always sought her advice, even in government matters, and 3,000 of her letters to him (along with 1,500 of his replies) survive.
• sociologist.^[36]
  However her work ranges more widely than this; she wrote books and essays on philosophy, religion, society, history, politics, literature, biography, and many other forms. In Society in America, she criticised the state of women's education, stating that the "intellect of women is confined by an unjustifiable restriction" of access to education; she urged women to become well-educated and free. She also savagely criticised America for the contradiction between its liberal principles and its then practice of slavery.
• Harriet Taylor Mill (1807–1858) was a philosopher and women's rights advocate. In John Stuart Mill's autobiography, he claimed she was the joint author of most of the books and articles published under his name. He stated that "when two persons have their thoughts and speculations completely in common it is of little consequence, in respect of the question of originality, which of them holds the pen." Together, they wrote "Early Essays on Marriage and Divorce", published in 1832.^[37] The debate about the nature and extent of her collaboration is ongoing.^[38]
• Sarah Margaret Fuller (1810–1850) was an American journalist, critic, philosopher and women's rights advocate. Her book Woman in the Nineteenth Century is considered the first major feminist work in the United States. She was an advocate of women's rights and, in particular, women's education and the right to employment. Many other advocates for women's rights and feminism, including Susan B. Anthony
  , cite Fuller as a source of inspiration.
• Frances Power Cobbe (1822-1904) was a very well-known writer on philosophical and religious subjects in Victorian Britain, as well as a feminist and leading animal welfare campaigner. She was an intuitionist in ethics, a critic of Darwin and atheism, and addressed the full range of philosophical topics including philosophy of mind, aesthetics, history, death and personal immortality, and moral theory. In 1863 she set out a philosophical case for animal rights.
• abolition of slavery and she sought to expand women's rights
  . In 1873 Blackwell founded the Association for the Advancement of Women.
• Frances Julia Wedgwood (1833-1913) published from the 1860s to 1890s on the metaphysical, religious, and ethical implications of Darwin’s theory of evolution; arguments for women’s rights and suffrage; Biblical criticism; a large-scale account of the development of ‘the moral ideal’ across world civilisations; and Judaism’s central contribution to European civilisation. Her works include The Moral Ideal in 1888.
• semiology
  .
• Vernon Lee (1856-1935) is best known for her many writings on aesthetics, including Belcaro (1881), ‘Art and Life’ (1896), and 'The Beautiful' (1913). She was associated with the aestheticist movement in the 1880s but went on to criticise it and reconnect beauty with goodness. She also wrote on ethical, religious, and political topics, including vivisection, evolution, atheism, and utilitarianism. She experimented with forms that straddled the boundary between philosophy and literature.
• Constance Naden (1858–89) defended induction in science, argued for atheism, and put forward the metaphysical system she called ‘hylo-idealism’, on which we can know only our own ideas and nothing outside them, yet these ideas are merely the products of our brains reacting to physical stimuli.
• Bertha von Suttner (1843–1914) was a Czech-Austrian pacifist and novelist. In 1905 she was the first woman to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.^[39] Suttner's pacifism was influenced by the writings of Immanuel Kant, Henry Thomas Buckle, Herbert Spencer, Charles Darwin and Leo Tolstoy (Tolstoy praised Die Waffen nieder!).^[40]
• Helene von Druskowitz (1856–1918) was an Austrian philosopher, writer and music critic. She was the second woman to obtain a Doctorate in Philosophy, which she obtained in Zürich. She usually published under a male alias because of the predominant sexism of the era.
• social reformer. Her short story "The Yellow Wallpaper" became a bestseller. The story is about a woman who suffers from mental illness after three months of being closeted in a room by her husband. She argued that the domestic environment oppressed women through the patriarchal beliefs upheld by society.^[41] Gilman argued that women's contributions to civilization, throughout history, have been halted because of an androcentric culture. She argued that women were the underdeveloped half of humanity.^[42]
  She believed economic independence would bring freedom and equality for women.

• women's right to vote
  .
• free-thinking "rebel woman" by admirers, and denounced by critics as an advocate of violent revolution.^[48] Her writing and lectures spanned a wide variety of issues, including atheism, freedom of speech, militarism, capitalism, marriage, free love, and homosexuality. Although she distanced herself from first-wave feminism and its efforts toward women's suffrage
  , she developed ways of incorporating gender politics into anarchism.
• class struggle
  .

Contemporary philosophy is the present period in the history of Western philosophy beginning at the end of the 19th century with the professionalization of the discipline and the rise of analytic and continental philosophy. Some influential women philosophers from this period include:

• John Haldane said she "certainly has a good claim to be the greatest woman philosopher of whom we know".^[3]
• power, and the subjects of politics, direct democracy, authority, and totalitarianism. The Hannah Arendt Prize
  is named in her honor.
• philosopher of art, who was influenced by Ernst Cassirer and Alfred North Whitehead. She was one of the first women to achieve an academic career in philosophy and the first woman to be popularly and professionally recognized as an American philosopher. Langer is best known for her 1942 book entitled Philosophy in a New Key. It argued that there is a basic and pervasive human need to symbolize, to invent meanings, and to invest meanings in one's world.^[50]

• social theorist. Though she did not consider herself a philosopher, she had a significant influence on both feminist existentialism and feminist theory.^[51] De Beauvoir wrote novels, essays, biographies, autobiography and monographs on philosophy, politics and social issues. She is known for her 1949 treatise The Second Sex, a detailed analysis of women's oppression and a foundational tract of contemporary feminism
  .
• Patricia Churchland (born 1943) is a Canadian-American philosopher noted for her contributions to neurophilosophy and the philosophy of mind. She is UC President's professor of philosophy emerita at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD), where she has taught since 1984. Educated at the University of British Columbia, the University of Pittsburgh, and the University of Oxford, she taught philosophy at the University of Manitoba from 1969 to 1984.
• Dorothy Emmet (1904–2000) was a Commonwealth Fellowship at Radcliffe College, where she was a pupil of A.N. Whitehead. From 1932 to 1938 she was a lecturer in Philosophy at King's College, Newcastle-upon-Tyne (now the University of Newcastle), having beaten A.J. Ayer as a finalist for the job. She joked that the profession owed her one, since Ayer went on to a distinguished career at University College London. Emmet went from Newcastle to the University of Manchester, first as a lecturer in the Philosophy of Religion and then as Sir Samuel Hall Professor of Philosophy. She was head of Manchester University's philosophy department for over twenty years. With Margaret Masterman and Richard Braithwaite she was a founder member of the Epiphany Philosophers, and Editor of Theoria to Theory. Emmet was also President of the Aristotelian Society 1953–1954. Between 1966 and 1976 she paid a number of visits to Africa as an examiner and consultant on courses in philosophy in the universities of Ifa and Ibadan, Nigeria. Emmet was a Fellow of Lucy Cavendish College, Cambridge, which has specialized in students from non-traditional backgrounds. Her books include Whitehead's Philosophy of Organism (1932) and The Nature of Metaphysical Thinking (1945).
• Wittgenstein
  , although she rarely dealt explicitly with materials treated by him.
• Cambridge University. She has written on logic, the philosophy of language, epistemology, and metaphysics. Her pragmatism follows that of Charles Sanders Peirce. Haack's major contribution to philosophy is her epistemological theory called foundherentism,^[52][53][54] which is her attempt to avoid the logical problems of both pure foundationalism (which is susceptible to infinite regress) and pure coherentism (which is susceptible to circularity). Haack has been a fierce critic of Richard Rorty.^[55][56] She is critical of the view that there is a specifically female perspective on logic and scientific truth and is critical of feminist epistemology. She holds that many feminist critiques of science and philosophy are overly concerned with 'political correctness'.^[57][58]
• Mary Midgley (1919–2018) was an English moral philosopher. Midgley was a senior lecturer in philosophy at Newcastle University, and is known today for her work on science, ethics and animal rights. Midgley strongly opposed reductionism and scientism, and any attempts to make science a substitute for the humanities—a role for which it is, she argued, wholly inadequate. She wrote extensively about what philosophers can learn from nature, particularly from animals. The Guardian described her as a fiercely combative philosopher and the UK's "foremost scourge of 'scientific pretension.'"^[59]
• Mistress of Girton College, Cambridge. Warnock studied at Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford, and was made an Honorary Fellow in 1984. She delivered the Gifford Lectures, entitled "Imagination and Understanding," at the University of Glasgow in 1992. She has written extensively on ethics, existentialism, and philosophy of mind.^[60]
• Prince of Asturias Award (1981) and the Miguel de Cervantes Prize
  (1988).
• esthetics, she upheld romanticism.^[66] Rand regards Aristotle as her sole major philosophical influence.^[67]
• Giannina Braschi (born 1954) is a Latina philosopher from Puerto Rico who writes on decolonialization, "feardom", enculturation and immigration, and the contradictions of Puerto Rican citizenship.^[68]
• Susan Hurley (born 1954): She wrote on practical philosophy as well as on philosophy of mind, bringing these disciplines closer together. Her work draws on sources from the social sciences as well as the neurosciences, and can be broadly characterised as both naturalistic and interdisciplinary.
• Linda Martín Alcoff (born 1955) is a Latina philosopher from Panama who coedited Stories of Women in Philosophy.^[69] Her subjects spans decolonial practices and the salience of racial identify.^[70]

Other notable philosophers include:

• Grete Hermann (1901–1984)
• Ayn Rand (1905-1982)
• Alice Ambrose (1906–2001)
• Sofia Vanni-Rovighi (1908–1990)
• Simone Weil (1909–1943)
• Raya Dunayevskaya (1910–1987)
• Jeanne Hersch (1910–2000)
• Iris Murdoch (1919–1999)
• Ruth Barcan Marcus (1921–2012)
• Mary Hesse (1924–2016)
• Judith Jarvis Thomson (1929–2020)
• Cora Diamond (born 1937)
• Marilyn Frye (born 1941)
• Julia Kristeva (born 1941)
• Genevieve Lloyd (born 1941)
• Onora O'Neill (born 1941)
• Nancy Fraser (born 1947)
• Martha Nussbaum (born 1947)
• Barbara Cassin (born 1947)
• Rebecca Goldstein (born 1950)
• Christine Korsgaard (born 1952)
• Susan Hurley (born 1954)
• Judith Butler (born 1956)
• Ruth Hagengruber (born 1958)
• Nancy Bauer (philosopher) (born 1960)
• Tamar Gendler (born 1965)
• Ilaria Brocchini [de] (born 1966)
• Alice Crary (born 1967)
• Rahel Jaeggi (born 1967)

Contemporary representation and working climate

In the early 1990s, the Canadian Philosophical Association claimed that "...there is compelling evidence" of "...philosophy’s gender imbalance" and "bias and partiality in many of its theoretical products." In 1992, the association recommended that "fifty percent of [philosophy]...positions should be filled by women."^[8] In a 2008 article "Changing the Ideology and Culture of Philosophy: Not by Reason (Alone)," MIT philosophy professor Sally Haslanger stated that the top twenty graduate programs in philosophy in the US have from 4 percent to 36 percent women faculty.^[8] In June 2013, Duke University professor of sociology Kieran Healy 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; as such, the encyclopedia "encourage[s] [their] authors, subject editors, and referees to help ensure that SEP entries do not overlook the work of women or indeed of members of underrepresented groups more generally."^[8]

American philosopher Sally Haslanger stated in 2008 that "...it is very hard to find a place in philosophy that isn’t actively hostile towards women and minorities, or at least assumes that a successful philosopher should look and act like a (traditional, white) man."^[72] Haslanger states that she experienced "occasions when a woman’s status in graduate school was questioned because she was married, or had a child (or had taken time off to have a child so was returning to philosophy as a ‘mature’ student), or was in a long-distance relationship". American philosopher Martha Nussbaum, who completed a PhD in philosophy at Harvard University in 1975, alleges that she encountered a tremendous amount of discrimination during her studies at Harvard, including sexual harassment and problems getting childcare for her daughter.^[71]

In July 2015, British philosopher

According to an August 2013 article in Salon, a tenured male University of Miami philosopher resigned after allegedly "...sending emails to a [female] student in which he suggested that they have sex three times."^[10] Jennifer Saul, a professor of philosophy at the University of Sheffield, set up a blog for women philosophers in 2010. She received numerous allegations of sexual harassment by male philosophy faculty, including a "job candidate who said she was sexually assaulted at the annual APA meeting where job interviews take place", an "undergraduate whose professor joked publicly about dripping hot wax on her nipples" and a "... lesbian who found herself suddenly invited, after she came out, to join in the sexualizing of her female colleagues." Saul states that philosophy departments failed to deal with the allegations.^[10] In 2013, the American Philosophical Association formed a committee to study the allegations of sexual harassment of women students and professors by male philosophy faculty.^[6] Saul states that one of the allegations was regarding a "...distinguished visiting speaker whose first words are: "Show me a grad student I can fuck"."^[7] Saul states that women are "...leaving philosophy after being harassed, assaulted, or retaliated against."^[7] In 2014, Inside Higher Education reported allegations that a Yale University philosophy professor had sexually harassed a woman; the "alleged victim says she reported the professor to Yale, with no real result".^[6] In an interview with Inside Higher Ed, the alleged victim stated that she "...suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder that impedes everyday life, not only from the alleged attack but also from the "browbeating" she endured as she attempted to report the professor, again and again, to Yale officials."^[6]

In 1993, the American Philosophical Association's sexual harassment committee set out guidelines for addressing this issue in philosophy departments. The APA guidelines, which were revised in 2013, stated that:^[81]

• "Sexual advances, requests for sexual favors, or sexually directed remarks constitute sexual harassment when submission to such conduct is made a condition of academic or employment decisions, or when such conduct persists despite its rejection."
• "Sexual harassment is a serious violation of professional ethics, and should be regarded and treated as such by members of the profession. Sexual harassment is a form of prohibited discrimination when an institution or individual employee is aware of a sexually hostile environment and condones, tolerates or allows that environment to exist. Colleges and universities should supply clear, fair institutional procedures under which charges of sexual harassment on campus can be brought, assessed, and acted on."
• "Complaints of sexual harassment at APA-sponsored activities should be brought to the chair of the committee for the defense of professional rights of philosophers or, if they arise in the context of placement activities, to the APA ombudsperson. Complaints of sexual harassment by or against APA staff members should be brought to the chair of the board."

Black women

Phillis Wheatley and Ida B. Wells are other notable women thinkers of African and African-American background in the 19th century.

There are few black women philosophers, which includes women of African and Caribbean ancestry,

Few Asian women are recognized in contemporary Western philosophy. In a New York Times interview^[85] with George Yancy, Korean-American philosopher Emily S. Lee, assistant professor of philosophy at California State University, Fullerton, states, "I wonder if some of my experiences occur from being Asian-American, in the ways people stereotypically assume that I must specialize in certain areas of philosophy or behave in specific ways, such as being quiet and subdued." She postulates that the social forces that stereotype and encourage Asian-Americans to enter more lucrative and secure fields (such as engineering or medicine) combined with influences within the field of philosophy discouraging Asian-American youths from continuing their study in the field has led to the extremely small population of Asian-American female philosophers. University of Washington philosophy professor Carole Lee's report in the American Philosophical Association's newsletter on Asian and Asian-American Philosophers and Philosophies suggests^[86] that Asian women face conflicting stereotypes, making it difficult for them to fit into the field of philosophy: "Women are stereotyped as submissive rather than aggressive and as being bad at math: they lack both characteristics associated with philosophy." On the other had, "Asian Americans are stereotyped as being mathematical; however, they are characterized in passive rather than aggressive terms." Philosopher David Kim offers the explanation that a lack of Asian American mentors in philosophy and "derogation of philosophical thought that resonates with their identity" may also contribute to the wide disparity.

Latinas in philosophy

The burgeoning field of Latino philosophy acknowledges the role of

There are many possible causes for why women are underrepresented in philosophy. As mentioned above, female philosophers have faced discrimination and sexual harassment in the workplace. Other hypotheses have risen as the problem of underrepresentation becomes more apparent. A. E. Kings points to a particular "myth of genius" that could be affecting the rate at which women pursue post-graduate degrees in philosophy. This myth is about perception; Kings believes that women are less likely to be perceived as "geniuses."[96] These perceptions can be internalized, which "can lead to underperformance, and even withdrawal from a discipline altogether."^[96] Underrepresentation can be seen as a cyclical issue. Because there are few women in the academic field, women face challenges upon entering a male-dominated area, which could in turn discourage them from continuing higher education in philosophy. Sally Haslanger (mentioned above) recalled "in my year at Berkeley and in the two years ahead of me and two years behind me, there was only one woman each year in classes of eight to ten students. Eventually, the other four women dropped out, so I was the only woman left in five consecutive classes."^[97]

Role Overload

Role overload is a concept that can apply to women in a multitude of ways. Role overload is the idea that there are multiple roles a person must take on, and in maintaining these roles, psychological duress can occur.^[98] These roles could be within a workplace, higher education, or at home. Examples of these roles outside of the academic and workplace environment include the role of mother or caregiver. Role overload could also occur if a person is required to fulfill many roles at once within the workplace. In higher education, role overload could be seen as a person performing the roles of a student and teaching assistant at the same time. It could also compound; a woman could be a mother, working a job, as well as being a student.^[98]

Reports from the US

The National Center for Education Statistics' 2000 report, "Salary, Promotion, and Tenure Status of Minority and Women Faculty in U.S. Colleges and Universities," estimates in Table 23 that the total number of "History and Philosophy" U.S. citizens and full-time faculty who primarily taught in 1992 was 19,000, of which 79% were men (i.e. 15,010 men in history and philosophy), 21% were women (3,990). They add, "In fact, men were at least twice as likely as women to teach history and philosophy."^[99]

In their 1997 report, "Characteristics and Attitudes of Instructional Faculty and Staff in the Humanities," NCES notes, that about "one-half of full-time instructional faculty and staff in 4-year institutions in English and literature (47 percent) and foreign languages (50 percent) were female in the fall of 1992, compared with less than one-half of instructional faculty and staff in history (24 percent) and philosophy and religion (13 percent) (table 4)." In this report they measure Philosophy and Religion in the same data set, and estimate the total number of full-time instructional Philosophy and Religion faculty and staff in 4-yr institutions to be 7,646. Of these, 87.3% are male (6675 men), 12.7 are female (971 women).^[100] The 1997 report measures History Full-time instructional faculty and staff in 4-yr institutions to be 11,383; male:76.3 (8,686 men); female: 23.7 (2,697 women). The numbers of women in philosophy from the two studies are not easily comparable, but one rough method may be to subtract the number of women in history in the 1997 report from the number of women estimated to be in 'history and philosophy' in the 2000 report. Doing so suggests that as a rough estimate, 1,293 women are employed as instructors of philosophy.

The 1997 report indicates that a large portion of all humanities instructors are part-time.^[101] Part-time employees are disproportionately female but not majority female.^[102] Therefore, considerations of full-time employees only necessarily leave out data on many women working part-time to remain active in their field. In 2004, the percentage of Ph.D.s in philosophy, within the U.S., going to women reached a record high percentage: 33.3%, or 121 of the 363 doctorates awarded.^[103]

Organizations and campaigns

Minorities and Philosophy (MAP)

Minorities and Philosophy^[104] (MAP) is an international movement of graduate and undergraduate students and faculty members in philosophy working on issues related to "the underrepresentation of women an minorities in philosophy."^[105] MAP consists of chapters at universities around the world, and the format can vary from school to school. However, all chapters focus broadly on issues minorities face in the profession, philosophical issues regarding minorities, and work done by minority philosophers, as well as issues that are specific to that school's philosophy department. MAP's short-term goals include providing a space for students to discuss and work on these issues, and long-term goals include contributing to the culture of academic philosophy and increasing participation and recognition of minorities in philosophy. In recent years, MAP has fostered collaborative work between chapters, establishing "connections between chapters that benefit both members and departments long-term,"^[106] increased work on inclusive pedagogy, and organized efforts to bring philosophy into communities outside of university campuses, such as prisons and elementary schools.

Committee on the Status of Women (American Philosophical Association)

The Committee on the Status of Women is a committee of the American Philosophical Association devoted to the assessment and reporting on the status of women in philosophy.^[107] It is currently chaired by Hilde Lindemann.^[108] In April 2007, the Committee on the Status of Women co-sponsored a session on the central question "Why Are Women Only 21% of Philosophy".^[109] At this session, Sharon Crasnow suggested that the low numbers of women in philosophy may be due to:

• Differential treatment: male and female university students may be treated differently in the classroom.
• Vicious circle: female students do not feel inclined to study philosophy because of a lack of contact with female philosophy professors.
• Misleading statistics: university administrators focus on gender representation in the humanities overall, which obscures the disparity in philosophy.^[109]

Society for Women in Philosophy

This section needs to be updated. Please help update this article to reflect recent events or newly available information. (December 2023)

The Society for Women in Philosophy is a group created in 1972 that seeks to support and promote women in philosophy. It has a number of branches around the world, including in New York, the American Pacific, the United Kingdom and Canada.^[110] Each year, the society names one philosopher the distinguished woman philosopher of the year.^[111]

Honorees include:

Gendered Conference Campaign

The blog Feminist Philosophers hosts the Gendered Conference Campaign, which works toward increasing the representation of women at philosophy conferences and in edited volumes. The blog states that "all-male events and volumes help to perpetuate the stereotyping of philosophy as male. This in turn to contributes to implicit bias against women in philosophy...."^[112]

See also

• List of female philosophers

References