Women in philosophy

Women have engaged in philosophy throughout the field's history. While there were women philosophers since ancient times, and a relatively small number were accepted as philosophers during the ancient, medieval, modern and contemporary eras, particularly during the 20th and 21st century, almost no woman philosophers have entered the philosophical Western canon. Women have engaged in philosophy throughout the field's history. While there were women philosophers since ancient times, and a relatively small number were accepted as philosophers during the ancient, medieval, modern and contemporary eras, particularly during the 20th and 21st century, almost no woman philosophers have entered the philosophical Western canon. In Asia, women were vital in philosophy in ancient times. 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 (c. 800 AD) and Akka Mahadevi (1130–1160) are other known female thinkers in the Indian philosophical tradition. In China, Confucius hailed the female Jing Jiang of Lu (5th c. BCE) as being wise and an example for his students, while Ban Zhao (45–116) wrote several vital historical and philosophical texts. In Korea, Im Yunjidang (1721–93) were among the most notable women philosophers during the enlightened mid-Chosŏn era. Among notable female Muslim philosophers are Rabia of Basra (714–801), A’ishah al-Ba’uniyyah of Damascus (d. 1517), and Nana Asma'u (1793–1864) from the Sokoto Caliphate of today's Nigeria. In early colonial Latin-America, the philosopher Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz (1651–95) was known as 'The Phoenix of America'. In ancient philosophy in the West, while academic philosophy was typically the domain of male philosophers such as Plato and Aristotle, female philosophers such as Hipparchia of Maroneia (active ca. 325 BC), Arete of Cyrene (active 5th–4th century BC) and Aspasia of Miletus (470–400 BC) were active during this period. Notable medieval philosophers include Hypatia (5th century), St. Hildegard of Bingen (1098-1179) and St. Catherine of Sienna (1347-1380). Notable modern philosophers included Mary Wollstonecraft (1759-1797) and Sarah Margaret Fuller (1810-1850). Influential contemporary philosophers include Edith Stein (1891-1942), Susanne Langer (1895–1985), Hannah Arendt (1906–1975), Simone de Beauvoir (1908–1986), Elizabeth Anscombe (1919–2001), Mary Midgley (1919–2018), Philippa Foot (1920–2010), Mary Warnock (1924–2019), Julia Kristeva (born 1941), Patricia Churchland (born 1943) and Susan Haack (born 1945). In the early 1800s, some colleges and universities in the UK and US began admitting women, giving rise to new generations of female academics. Nevertheless, U.S. Department of Education reports from the 1990s indicate that philosophy is one of the least proportionate fields in the humanities with respect to gender. 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 philosophical '...canon remains dominated by white males—the discipline that...still hews to the myth that genius is tied to gender.' According to Saul, 'hilosophy, the oldest of the humanities, is also the malest (and the whitest). While other areas of the humanities are at or near gender parity, philosophy is actually more overwhelmingly male than even mathematics.' 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 ...positions should be filled by women.” 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. 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 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.” In 2014, philosophy professors Neven Sesardic and Rafael De Clercq published an article entitled 'Women in Philosophy: Problems with the Discrimination Hypothesis.' The article states that a '...number of philosophers attribute the underrepresentation of women in philosophy largely to bias against women or some kind of wrongful discrimination'. Evidence cited includes 'gender disparities that increase along the path from undergraduate student to full-time faculty member'; 'anecdotal accounts of discrimination in philosophy'; 'research on gender bias in the evaluation of manuscripts, grants, and curricula vitae in other academic disciplines'; 'psychological research on implicit bias'; 'psychological research on stereotype threat' and the '...relatively small number of articles written from a feminist perspective in leading philosophy journals'. Sesardic and De Clercq argue that 'proponents of the discrimination hypothesis, who include distinguished philosophers ...have tended to present evidence selectively.' 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.” 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. In July 2015, British philosopher Mary Warnock addressed the issue of the representation of women in British university philosophy departments, where 25% of faculty are women. Warnock stated she is '... against intervention, by quotas or otherwise, to increase women’s chances of employment' in philosophy. She also argues that '... there is nothing intrinsically harmful about this imbalance' and she states that she does not '...believe it shows a conscious bias against women.' Philosopher Julian Baggini states that he believes that there is '...little or no conscious discrimination against women in philosophy'. At the same time, Baggini states that there may be a '...great deal of unconscious bias' against women in philosophy, because philosophy generally does not address issues of gender or ethnicity.