“I am not afraid of storms because I am learning to sail my ship.” – Louisa May Alcott
But what if you were never allowed near the water?
What if women were allowed to write? Not a single woman, but millions of women who have been systematically excluded from formal civic and philosophical discussions. What if they had the opportunity to think and write without having to worry about a precarious home? What if they had a room and an afternoon in which they had nothing to do but think, like Descartes?
The architecture of exclusion
This exclusion was anchored in the structure of society. Women were not allowed to enter Oxford University until 1920. They were only allowed to obtain degrees in 1948. They took exams and sometimes even performed better than men, but only the men continued to receive scholarships and awards. In France, important ideas were discussed in schools that only men could attend. It was not until 1985 that one of these schools, the École Normale Supérieurestarted accepting women. Until then, women in Germany had no access to universities 1908. And this is where famous philosophers like Kant and Hegel developed their ideas.
Gaps in the wall
There were some women who were recognized in philosophy, but they were exceptions. They usually came from families or had connections to powerful men. Christine de Pizan wrote a book called The Book of the City of Ladies. She was able to publish at this time because her father had connections to the French court. Émilie du Châtelet translated Newton’s Principia Mathematica into French. However, her colleague Voltaire remembered her “A great man whose only mistake was being a woman“.
Mary Wollstonecraft wrote a book called “A Vindication of the Rights of Woman.” Yet her philosophy was ignored for a century because her posthumous memoirs revealed a scandalous personal life.
This exclusion was anchored in the structure of society. Women were not allowed to enter Oxford University until 1920. They were only allowed to obtain a degree in 1948. In India, hierarchies of gender, caste and social class lead to intellectual exclusion.
These women were able to succeed because they had freedom of thought and access to libraries. This freedom was built on the work of other women who managed their homes. Women like Christine de Pizan and Émilie du Châtelet were able to think and write because other upper-class women took care of their households.
In India, hierarchies of gender, caste and social class lead to intellectual exclusion. However, India also has a history of women’s intellectual contributions. Gargi Vachaknavi held debates with Yajnavalkya in the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad. Likewise, the Therigatha, a collection of verses written by Buddhist nuns from the 6th to 3rd centuries BC. BC, remains one of the oldest surviving literary works by women in the world. These women wrote about freedom, desire, and the body centuries before Western philosophers in a way that was distinctly existentialist.
During the Bhakti period, women like Mirabai, Akka Mahadevi and Lal Ded used religion to criticize norms. Mirabai rejected her marriage and caste to pursue a divine love ethic, while Akka Mahadevi wandered naked through public spaces to challenge social norms. Lal Ded’s ideas have a tradition in the working class.
Formal philosophical traditions in India such as Vedanta and Nyaya were largely male and Brahminical in origin. They claimed to have universal knowledge but denied access to women and low-caste people.
Colonial doubling and institutional resistance
With the advent of colonialism, the oppression of women was not eliminated, but rather Victorian patriarchy was imposed on the existing structures. This redefined the oppression of women as a sign of backwardness and placed Indian women at the center of the conflict between colonial authorities and Indian men.
FII
In response to that Savitribai Phule opened the school for girls in Pune in 1848, despite facing physical threats and public shame. She and her husband Jyotirao Phule founded institutions that educated women and challenged the Brahminical social order. Her work was a precursor to Dalit feminism. Phule remains largely invisible, while Kant is widely taught.
This continues to this day. This was the result of a study published in 2019 by the American Philosophical Association Women hold 21% of permanent philosophy positions worldwide. A study published in Wiley Online Library found that 97% of introductory philosophy instructors are men. Indian women make more than 40% of doctoral student enrollments However, they hold few positions in areas that influence civic, political, and ethical theory.
The epistemic costs
When we foreground bodies and lived experience, our philosophy changes. The Western tradition, from Plato to Kant, saw the mind as separate from the emotions, but what if our starting point was the body? What if we thought about what it feels like to be pregnant, raising children, or moving through rooms at night? Our fundamental theories of ethics, government, and justice would develop differently.
Nursing ethics was created in the 1980s. It criticized Kant’s notion of a decision maker and argued that moral and political life involved dependency. Standpoint theory argues that our social position determines how we see the world. When we set limits on who we consider as a thinking subject, we create blind spots. For example, women’s health diagnoses are significantly different than men’s because they are female bodies systematically excluded from research. This is applied philosophy that determines which body is the object of thought, and it can be a matter of life and death.
Ambedkarite feminists create thinkers who address the intersection of caste and gender. Economists from the Indian Gender Budget Group incorporate feminist insights into financial policy. Regionalist authors create intellectual works that extend beyond the scope of English, but this work is often overlooked in broader philosophical contexts.
The core idea remains difficult to change. The discourse in which reason is mapped onto the male person and emotions onto the female person continues to displace the logic of care and the wisdom of ancient practices. The library of our centuries-old thought appears to be complete. Half of the texts are missing because women were denied the opportunity to write. The current task of philosophy is not to complement justice, reason, and the state, but to rethink them as if every human life were a valid starting point.
The library is incomplete, but the writing has begun.
References:
- Women in philosophy – the philosopher’s magazine. The Philosopher’s Magazine –. https://philosophersmag.com/women-in-philosophy/
- National Institute for Demographic Studies (INED), F-75020 Paris, France; Aix Marseille Univ, CNRS, AMSE, Marseille, France. https://stephanebenveniste.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Benveniste-2025-Noble-Lineage-and-the-Persistence-of-Privileges-in-Elite-Education.pdf
- Émilie Du Châtelet (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy), https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/emilie-du-chatelet/
- German history in documents and pictures. https://germanhistorydocs.org/de/wilhelmine-deutschland-und-der-erste-weltkrieg-1890-1918/female-university-students-1908#:~:text=Abstract,women%20university%20admission%20in%201909.
- Home | AISHE | India. (nd). https://aishe.gov.in/
- Journal of Community & Applied Social Psychology, 35(1). https://doi.org/10.1002/casp.70036
- Google Arts Google Arts & Culture. https://artsandculture.google.com/asset/opening-of-the-first-school-for-girls-by-savitribai-phule-and-jyotirao-phule-malvika-asher/LAGLdJFS0eAbKw?hl=en
- Ley, M. (2023). Nursing ethics and the future of work: a different voice. Philosophy & Technology, 36(1), 7. https://doi.org/10.1007/s13347-022-00604-5
- Women make history | Oxford University. (nd). https://www.ox.ac.uk/about/oxford-people/women-at-oxford