Essay Series 3.3: Women’s contributions to philosophy have been ignored, suppressed, or erased.

Women and their accomplishments have largely been kept out of the study of traditional philosophy. Regan Penaluna’s book How to Think Like a Woman documents her recent attempt to study philosophy at a major university, where she found many barriers to her studies.¹⁶³

Penaluna didn’t learn about women philosophers during her coursework. She assumed this was because women hadn’t contributed substantially to the field. Penaluna references a study showing that women are only 13 percent of authors in major philosophy journals. Some scholars say that this occurs because mainstream philosophers dismiss the work of women and people of color.¹⁶⁴

Philosophers have been some of the most consistent and powerful voices saying that women are inferior to men. According to Penaluna and other sources, many of the ancient Greek philosophers disparaged women and said that men must dominate women because women are weak. Women were to be supportive of men. Aristotle said that women were like disabled men. Similar attitudes continued through early Christian thought and the philosophy of the Middle Ages. Philosophers carried on in this vein throughout the 17th and 18th centuries, saying women were not the equal of men. In the 19th century, Auguste Comte, a leading philosopher at the time, said that women were intellectually inferior to men. Charles Darwin said that women couldn’t achieve the same successes as men because women can’t think as deeply and don’t have the same level of reasoning, imagination, or use of the senses as men. A leading philosopher in the 1970s asserted that science appears to support the negative traditional views of women.¹⁶⁵

During her own explorations, Penaluna found early women philosophers’ work, which discusses men’s domination of society and how it affects women. Among the reasons Penaluna wrote her book was to highlight the work of a number of important women philosophers that she didn’t learn about during her graduate studies. Brief descriptions of their work follow.

Damaris Masham (1659 - 1708)

Masham said that knowing oneself and forming loving attachments is essential for a person to love God. Mothers have the vital role of transmitting the love that sets us on the path to engage with the world and make philosophical exploration possible. Masham said that educated mothers, who could think for themselves and follow God’s will, would raise smart sons who would eventually govern well. Women’s minds need to be freed from the societal disapproval that they face when they think for themselves.¹⁶⁶

Mary Astell (1666 to 1731)

Astell’s core message was that women need education so they can pursue personal happiness and contribute to society. She argued that women are as rational as men and need to use their reason to lead a good life. Women are not naturally inferior to men. Rather, they become so because of social conditioning that begins when they are young and continues throughout their lives. Astell said that women who aren’t amenable to domesticity could find worthy lives outside of marriage.¹⁶⁷

Catharine Cockburn (1678 -1749)

Cockburn’s belief was that our ideas about freedom and society should be based on benevolence, not selfishness. She believed that women and men have duties to others. Systematic oppression of women means that they behave more altruistically and men more selfishly. Men treating women as objects of pleasure hurts women.¹⁶⁸

Mary Wollstonecraft (1759 -1797)

Wollstonecraft was interested in the obstacles to women’s full human development. She believed women were weak when they staked their well-being on men. She drew attention to the way in which society promotes the oppression of women. Wollstonecraft said that men view women as obedient baby makers because it benefits them to do so. Any variations in women’s and men’s cognitive abilities are due to differences in schooling and experience. She said women’s servile traits would disappear if they had the same education and freedom as men.¹⁶⁹

Reflections

Women faced a classic chicken-and-egg problem. Generally, they didn’t receive education or opportunities equivalent to those of men. So, men and some women believed that women were inferior. The work of the women philosophers described in this essay, who worked during the 1600s and 1700s, correctly identified this problem and its causes. Their observations are as pertinent today as they were hundreds of years ago.

A few areas of philosophy include more women, people of color, and LGBTQ¹⁷⁰ groups. These areas include feminist philosophy, critical race theory, and queer theory. However, these schools of thought are under broad political attack in the United States.

If I had grown up learning about women’s contributions to philosophy, I would have

trusted my own intellect and achievements much earlier. And I would have exposed my children to this knowledge too. It might have made a difference in all of our lives.

What is your view of the work of women philosophers and their relevance today?