## 1. What is Feminism?



Broadly understood, feminism is both an intellectual commitment and a
political movement that seeks an end to gender-based oppression.
Motivated by the quest for social justice, feminist inquiry provides a
wide range of perspectives on cultural, economic, social, and
political phenomena. It identifies and evaluates the many ways that
some norms have been used to exclude, marginalize, and oppress people
on the basis of gender, as well as how gendered identities have been
shaped to conform and uphold the norms of a patriarchal society. In so
doing, it tries to understand the roots of a system that has been
prevalent in nearly all known places and times. It also explores what
a just society would look like.



While less frequently than one would think, throughout history women
have rebelled against repressive structures. It was not until the late
19th century that feminism coalesced into a movement. In the mid-1800s
the term *feminism* was still used to refer to "the
qualities of females." After the First International
Women's Conference in Paris in 1892, the term *feminism*,
following the French term *feministe*, was used
regularly in English for a belief in and advocacy of equal rights for
women based on the idea of the equality of the sexes. Hence the term
*feminism* in English is rooted in the mobilization for
women's suffrage in Europe and the United States during the late
nineteenth and early twentieth century.



As a term, *feminism* has many different uses and its meanings
are often contested. For example, some writers use the term to refer
to a historically specific political movement in the United States and
Europe; other writers use it to refer to the belief that there are
injustices against women, though there is no consensus on the exact
list of these injustices. Some have found it useful, if controversial,
to think of the women's movement in the United States as
occurring in "waves." The wave model has some virtues, but
it also tends to overlook a great deal of heterogeneity of thought in
any given moment. It works well enough for what is thought of as the
first wave, identified as the period from the mid-nineteenth century
until the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment in 1920. This first wave
focused on the struggle to achieve basic political rights. According
to the wave model, feminism in the United States waned after women
achieved voting rights, to be revived in the late 1960s and early
1970s as "second wave" feminism. In this second wave, the
model holds, feminists pushed beyond the early quest for political
rights to fight for greater equality across the board, e.g., in
education, the workplace, and at home. But in actuality, many
feminists during this time were focusing on more than equality. Like
the first wave, many of the leaders of the second wave of feminism
were white women seeking equal rights. But also, as in the first wave,
other voices emerged, broadening the movement. The second wave came to
include women of different identities, ethnicities, and orientations.
In addition to calling for equal political rights, they called for
greater equality across the board, e.g., in education, the workplace,
and at home. Transformations of feminism beginning in the 1990s have
resulted in a "third wave." Third Wave feminists often
critique earlier feminists for their lack of attention to the
differences among women due to class, ethnicity, nationality,
religion, and race (see Breines 2002; Springer 2002), and emphasize
"identity" as a site of gender struggle. (For more
information on the "wave" model and each of the
"waves," see the subsection on 
Waves of Feminism in the Other Internet
Resources section.)



Some feminist scholars object to identifying feminism in terms of
waves on the grounds that doing so eclipses differences within each
wave as well as continuity of feminist resistance to male domination
throughout history and across cultures. In other words, feminism is
not confined to a few (white) women in the West over the past century
or so. Moreover, even considering only relatively recent efforts to
resist male domination in Europe and the United States, the emphasis
on "First" and "Second" Wave feminism ignores
the ongoing resistance to male domination between the 1920s and 1960s
and the resistance outside mainstream politics, particularly by women
of color and working class women (Cott 1987). The wave model also
cannot account for theoretical work taking place between waves, for
example, of the tremendous work done by Simone de Beauvoir in her
groundbreaking book of 1949, *The Second Sex*. Because of these
many limitiations of the wave model, the feminist section of the SEP
makes little use of it.



Although the term *feminism* has a history in English linked
with women's activism from the late nineteenth century to the
present, it is useful to distinguish feminist ideas or beliefs from
feminist political movements, for even in periods where there has been
no significant political activism around women's subordination,
individuals have been concerned with and theorized about justice for
women. So, for example, it makes sense to ask whether Plato was a
feminist, given his view that some women should be trained to rule
(*Republic*, Book V), even though he was an exception in his
historical context (see, e.g., Tuana 1994). Overall, feminism can be
understood as not only a social movement but also a set of beliefs,
concepts, and theories that seek to analyze, diagnose, and identify
solutions to the manifold injustices that people suffer on account of
gendered norms. Broadly understood, this is feminism as a intellectual
movement. The SEP feminist section aims to chronicle and explain the
various theories, concepts, and philosophical tools that feminist
philosophers have developed.



Much has been made of the methodological differences or
"divides" between various philosophical traditions, namely
analytic and continental, but also pragmatist and psychoanalytic. But
throughout these entries the reader will find a continuity of
descriptions on the meaning of feminism, even with the heterogeneity
of the philosophical methodologies these entries' authors
employ. The entry on feminist ethics, written by the analytic feminist
philosopher Kathryn Norlock, describes that field in a way that is
agreeable to almost any feminist philosopher:



> 
> 
> *Feminist Ethics* aims "to understand, criticize, and
> correct" how gender operates within our moral beliefs and
> practices (Lindemann 2005, 11) and our methodological approaches to
> ethical theory. More specifically, feminist ethicists aim to
> understand, criticize, and correct: (1) the binary view of gender, (2)
> the privilege historically available to men, and/or (3) the ways that
> views about gender maintain oppressive social orders or practices that
> harm others, especially girls and women who historically have been
> subordinated along gendered dimensions including sexuality and
> gender-identity. (entry on
>  feminist ethics,
>  introduction)
> 
> 
> 



Likewise, the entry on feminist perspectives on power, written by the
critical theorist Amy Allen, proposes the idea that "although
any general definition of feminism would no doubt be controversial, it
seems undeniable that much work in feminist theory is devoted to the
tasks of critiquing gender subordination, analyzing its intersections
with other forms of subordination such as racism, heterosexism, and
class oppression, and envisioning prospects for individual and
collective resistance and emancipation." (entry on
 feminist perspectives on power,
 introduction)



Even with general overall shared commitments about the meaning of
feminism, numerous differences among feminist philosophers do show up
in the array of arenas outlined in this section of the SEP. Some of
these may be due to different methodological approaches (whether, for
example, continental or analytic), but others show up because of
different ontological commitments (such as the category of woman) and
beliefs about what kind of political and moral remedies should be
sought.



Nonetheless, over the decades there has been a lot of frustration,
perhaps because as philosophers these feminist theorists often want to
get to the (one) truth of the matter, for example, what is "a
woman"? What is freedom? What is autonomy? Yet so far any search
for a unified or unifying theory of feminism has yet to bear fruit.
Consider the seemingly unproblematic claim that feminism is a
commitment to women's equal rights. Perhaps it is, but framing
it this way comes with its own presuppositions. The first is that
feminism is committed to a liberal model of politics. Although most
feminists would probably agree that there is some sense of rights on
which achieving equal rights for women is a necessary condition for
feminism to succeed, most would also argue that this would not be
sufficient. This is because women's oppression under male
domination rarely if ever consists solely in depriving women of
political and legal rights, but also extends into the structure of our
society and the content of our culture, and the workings of languages
and how they shape perceptions and permeate our consciousness (e.g.,
Bartky 1988, Postl 2017). A second presupposition is that there is
some clear and universal definition of what it is to be a woman. The
SEP entry, Feminist Perspectives on Sex and Gender, gives a rich
overview of what is problematic about this supposition. Any attempt to
define "woman," according to Judith Butler, is also an
attempt to exclude some from that category. More recently this debate
shows up in discussions about nonbinary and trans people. Previously,
it showed up in suppositions that the typical subject of feminism was
white and middle class. While feminism would be easier to theorize if
it were clear who its subject is, any attempt to define it runs into
trouble. (see the entry on
 feminist perspectives on trans issues)



Is there any point, then, in asking what feminism is? Rather than
looking for a unified field theory of feminism, perhaps feminism can
be identified as an engagement precisely where there are
contradictions over questions of freedom, identity, and agency. These
contradictions are not just logical ones but also historical ones. For
example, the question of women's political equality to men arose
precisely at those historical moments when "all men" came
to be deemed as equal (McAfee 2021). During the French Revolution, the
French settled the matter by saying that "men" meant men
and not women. In the American Revolution, "men" was not
so clearly gendered but it was certainly raced as white. Equality
becomes an issue precisely where there is a disjunct between what
seems to be the case normatively and what is happening empirically.
Questions about the category of women arise in the context of
political diversity and biological malleability, where peoples of many
cultures mingle and sexual or gender identity can be altered. Feminist
debates over pornography and sex work become heated in the context,
respectively, of a free press and economic precarity. In short,
feminist inquiry arises in the context of disagreement and
contradiction and it produces new ways of approaching issues and
asking questions. Thus, that it lacks a cohesive set of answers may be
beside the point.



In sum, "feminism" is an umbrella term for a range of
views about injustices against women. There are disagreements among
feminists about the nature of justice in general and the nature of
sexism, in particular, the specific kinds of injustice or wrong women
suffer; and the group who should be the primary focus of feminist
efforts. Nonetheless, feminists are committed to bringing about social
change to end injustice against women, in particular, injustice
against women as women.


## 2. Feminist Scholarship



Contemporary feminist philosophical scholarship emerged in the 1970s
as more women began careers in higher education, including philosophy.
As they did so, they also began taking up matters from their own
experience for philosophical scrutiny. These scholars were influenced
both by feminist movements in their midst as well as by their
philosophical training, which generally was anything but feminist.
Until about the 1990s, one could not go to graduate school to study
"feminist philosophy." While students and scholars could
turn to the writings of Simone de Beauvoir or look back historically
to the writings of "first wave" feminists like Mary
Wollstonecraft, most of the philosophers writing in the first decades
of the emergence of feminist philosophy brought their particular
training and expertise to bear on analyzing issues raised by the
women's liberation movement of the 1960s and 1970s, such as
abortion, affirmative action, equal opportunity, the institutions of
marriage, sexuality, and love. Additionally, feminist philosophical
scholarship increasingly focused on the very same types of issues
taken up by mainstream philosophers.



Feminist philosophical scholarship begins with attention to women, and
to limitations on their roles and locations and the ways they were
valued or devalued. It developed further by considering gender in less
binary terms as well as recognizing that gender is only one fact of
the complex interactions among class, race, ability, and sexuality.
Feminist scholarship asks how attention to these might transform
feminist philosophy itself. From here we move to the realm of the
symbolic and how it constructs "the feminine." How is the
feminine instantiated and constructed within the texts of philosophy?
What role does it play in forming, either through its absence or its
presence, the central concepts of philosophy?



Feminist philosophers brought their philosophical tools to bear on
these questions. Since these feminist philosophers employed the
philosophical tools they knew best and found most promising, feminist
philosophy began to emerge from all the traditions of Western
philosophy prevalent at the end of the twentieth century, including
analytic, continental, and classical American philosophy. While the
thematic focus of their work was often influenced by the topics and
questions highlighted by these traditions, the larger shared feminist
concerns often create as much commonality as difference. Hence, a
given question could be taken up and addressed from an array of views
in ways that are sometimes divergent and at other times
complementary.



As an historically male discipline, many of the leading philosophical
journals and societies did not recognize much feminist scholarship as
properly philosophical. In response, feminist scholars began founding
their own journals and organizations. The first leading feminist
journal, *Hypatia: A Journal of Feminist Philosophy*, was
founded in 1982 as a venue for feminist philosophical scholarship. It
embraced a diversity of methodological approaches in feminist
philosophy, publishing work from a variety of traditions. Feminist
scholarship in each of these traditions is also advanced and supported
though scholarly exchange at various professional societies, including
the Society for Women in Philosophy, founded in the United States in
1972. Additionally, the Society for Analytical Feminism, founded in
1991, promotes the study of issues in feminism by methods broadly
construed as analytic, to examine the use of analytic methods as
applied to feminist issues, and to provide a means by which those
interested in analytical feminism can meet and exchange ideas. The
journal *philo*SOPHIA was established in 2005 to promote
continental feminist scholarly and pedagogical development. The
Society for the Study of Women Philosophers was established in 1987 to
promote the study of the contributions of women to the history of
philosophy. Similar organizations and journals on many continents
continue to advance scholarship in feminist philosophy. Often a
feminist philosophical society will publish its own journal, just as
the International Network on Feminist Approaches to Bioethics
publishes the *International Journal of Feminist Approaches to
Bioethics.* While the discipline of philosophy in the West remains
predominantly white and male, feminist journals and scholarship
continues to proliferate.


## 3. Approaches to Feminism



Important feminist philosophical work has emerged from all the current
major philosophical traditions, including analytic philosophy,
continental philosophy, and American pragmatist philosophy. It is also
emerging from other new areas of inquiry, such as Latin American
thought, which arises out of the context of colonialism. Entries in
the SEP under the heading "approaches to feminism" discuss
the impact of these traditions and constellations of thought on
feminist scholarship. The subsection also addresses how some work,
such as psychoanalytic feminism, bridges two or more traditions. The
editors of the feminist section of the SEP see these different
traditions as a rich array of methodologies rather than "continental
divides." The array reflects a variety of beliefs about what kinds of
philosophy are both fruitful and meaningful. The different
methodologies bring their own ways of asking and answering questions,
along with constructive and critical dialogue with mainstream
philosophical views and methods and new topics of inquiry. 



As the SEP continues to grow, we anticipate that this subsection on
approaches to feminism will expand to address other traditions,
including Black feminism. But for now, here are links to entries in
this subsection:


* analytic feminism
* continental feminism
* Latin American feminism
* pragmatist feminism
* intersections between pragmatist and continental feminism
* intersections between analytic and continental feminism
* psychoanalytic feminism



Though not included along with these in the table of contents, another
relevant approach can be found in the entry on
 gender in Confucian philosophy.



All these approaches share a set of feminist commitments and an
overarching criticism of institutions, presuppositions, and practices
that have historically favored men over women. They also share a
general critique of claims to universality and objectivity that ignore
male-dominated theories' own particularity and specificity.
Feminist philosophies of almost any philosophical orientation will be
much more perspectival, historical, contextual, and focused on lived
experience than their non-feminist counterparts. Unlike mainstream
philosophers who can seriously consider the philosophical conundrums
of brains in a vat, feminist philosophers always start by seeing
people as embodied. Feminists have also argued for the reconfiguration
of accepted structures and problems of philosophy. For example,
feminists have not only rejected the privileging of epistemological
concerns over moral and political concerns common to much of
philosophy, they have argued that these two areas of concern are
inextricably intertwined. Part 2 of the entry on
 analytic feminism
 lays out other areas of commonality across these various approaches.
For one, feminist philosophers generally agree that philosophy is a
powerful tool for, as Ann Garry states in that entry,
"understanding ourselves and our relations to each other, to our
communities, and to the state; to appreciate the extent to which we
are counted as knowers and moral agents; [and] to uncover the
assumptions and methods of various bodies of knowledge." As
such, philosophy is also a powerful tool for understanding how gender
itself has been constructed, that is, why and to whose benefit it is
to construct some people as lesser and less capable than others. Along
these lines, feminist philosophers are keenly attuned to male biases
at work in the history of philosophy, such as those regarding
"the nature of woman" and supposed value neutrality, which
on inspection is hardly neutral at all. Claims to universality,
feminist philosophers have found, are usually made from a very
specific and particular point of view, contrary to their manifest
assertions. Another orientation that feminist philosophers generally
share is a commitment to normativity and social change; they are never
content to analyze things just as they are but instead look for ways
to overcome oppressive practices and institutions.



Such questioning of the problems of mainstream approaches to
philosophy has often led to feminists using methods and approaches
from more than one philosophical tradition. As Ann Garry notes in Part
3 of the entry on
 analytic feminism
 (2017), it is not uncommon to find analytic feminists drawing on
non-analytic figures such as Beauvoir, Foucault, or Butler; and
because of their motivation to communicate with other feminists, they
are more motivated than other philosophers "to search for
methodological cross-fertilization." Moreover, feminist
philosophers are generally inclined to incorporate the perspectives of
all those who have been oppressed.



Even with their common and overlapping orientations, the differences
between the various philosophical approaches to feminism are
significant, especially in terms of styles of writing, influences, and
overall expectations about what philosophy can and should achieve.
Analytic feminist philosophy tends to value analysis and
argumentation, though anyone trained in philosophy does so as well.
Continental feminist theory puts more emphasis on interpretation and
deconstruction, and pragmatist feminism values lived experience and
exploration. Coming out of a post-Hegelian tradition, both continental
and pragmatist philosophers usually suspect that "truth,"
whatever that is, emerges and develops historically. They tend to
share with Nietzsche the view that truth claims often mask power
plays. Yet where continental and pragmatist philosophers are generally
wary about notions of truth, analytic feminists tend to argue that the
way to "counter sexism and androcentrism is through forming a
clear conception of and pursuing truth, logical consistency,
objectivity, rationality, justice, and the good." (Cudd 1996:
20).



These differences and intersections play out in the ways that various
feminists engage topics of common concern. One key area of
intersection, noted by Georgia Warnke, is the appropriation of
psychoanalytic theory, with Anglo-American feminists generally
adopting object-relations theories and continental feminists drawing
more on Lacan and contemporary French psychoanalytic theory, though
this is already beginning to change as it becomes clearer that
continental psychoanalytic theory is also interested, via Julia
Kristeva and Melanie Klein, in object-relations theory (see the entry
on
 intersections between analytic and continental feminism).
 The importance of psychoanalytic approaches is also underscored in
Shannon Sullivan's entry on
 intersections between pragmatist and continental feminism.
 Given the importance of
 psychoanalytic feminism
 for all three traditions, a separate essay on this approach to
feminist theory is included in this section.



No topic is more central to feminist philosophy than sex and gender,
but even here many variations on the theme flourish. Where analytic
feminism, with its critique of essentialism, holds the sex/gender
distinction practically as an article of faith (see the entry on
 feminist perspectives on sex and gender
 and Chanter 2009), continental feminists tend to suspect either (1)
that even the supposedly purely biological category of sex is itself
socially constituted (Butler 1990 and 1993) or (2) that sexual
difference itself needs to be valued and theorized (see especially
Cixous 1976 and Irigaray 1974).



Despite the variety of different approaches, styles, societies, and
orientations, feminist philosophers' commonalities are greater
than their differences. Many will borrow freely from each other and
find that other orientations contribute to their own work. Even the
differences over sex and gender add to a larger conversation about the
impact of culture and society on bodies, experience, and pathways for
change.


## 4. Interventions in Philosophy



Philosophers who are feminists have, in their work in traditional
fields of study, begun to change those very fields. The
*Encyclopedia* includes a range of entries on how feminist
philosophies have intervened in conventional areas of philosophical
research, areas in which philosophers often tend to argue that they
are operating from a neutral, universal point of view (notable
exceptions are pragmatism, poststructuralism, and some phenomenology).
Historically, philosophy has claimed that the norm is universal and
the feminine is abnormal, that universality is not gendered, but that
all things feminine are not universal. Not surprisingly, feminists
have pointed out how in fact these supposed neutral enterprises are in
fact quite gendered, namely, male gendered. For example, feminists
working on environmental philosophy have uncovered how practices
disproportionately affect women, children, and people of color.
Liberal feminism has shown how supposed universal truths of liberalism
are in fact quite biased and particular. Feminist epistemologists have
called out "epistemologies of ignorance" that traffic in
not knowing. Across the board, in fact, feminist philosophers are
uncovering male biases and also pointing to the value of
particularity, in general rejecting universality as a norm or
goal.



Entries under the heading of feminist interventions include the
following:


* feminist aesthetics
* feminist bioethics
* feminist environmental philosophy
* feminist epistemology and philosophy of science
* feminist ethics
* feminist history of philosophy
* liberal feminism
* feminist metaphysics
* feminist moral psychology
* feminist philosophy of biology
* feminist philosophy of language
* feminist philosophy of law
* feminist philosophy of religion
* feminist political philosophy
* feminist social epistemology


## 5. Topics in Feminism



Feminist critical attention to philosophical practices has revealed
the inadequacy of dominant philosophical tropes as well as the need to
turn philosophical attention to things that had previously gone
unattended. For example, feminists working from the perspective of
women's lives have been influential in bringing philosophical
attention to the phenomenon of care and care-giving (Ruddick 1989;
Held 1995, 2007; Hamington 2006), dependency (Kittay 1999), disability
(Wilkerson 2002; Carlson 2009), women's labor (Waring 1999;
Delphy 1984; Harley 2007), the devaluation of women's
testimonies (see the entry on
 feminist epistemology and philosophy of science),
 and scientific bias and objectivity (Longino 1990). In doing so they
have revealed weaknesses in existing ethical, political, and
epistemological theories. More generally, feminists have called for
inquiry into what are typically considered "private"
practices and personal concerns, such as the family, sexuality, and
the body, in order to balance what has seemed to be a masculine
pre-occupation with "public" and impersonal matters.
Philosophy presupposes interpretive tools for understanding our
everyday lives; feminist work in articulating additional dimensions of
experience and aspects of our practices is invaluable in demonstrating
the bias in existing tools, and in the search for better ones.



Feminist explanations of sexism and accounts of sexist practices also
raise issues that are within the domain of traditional philosophical
inquiry. For example, in thinking about care, feminists have asked
questions about the nature of the self; in thinking about gender,
feminists have asked what the relationship is between the natural and
the social; in thinking about sexism in science, feminists have asked
what should count as knowledge. In some such cases, mainstream
philosophical accounts provide useful tools; in other cases,
alternative proposals have seemed more promising.



In the sub-entries included under "feminism (topics)" in
the
 Table of Contents
 to this *Encyclopedia*, authors survey some of the recent
feminist work on a topic, highlighting the issues that are of
particular relevance to philosophy. These entries are:


* feminist perspectives on argumentation
* feminist perspectives on autonomy
* feminist perspectives on class and work
* feminist perspectives on disability
* feminist perspectives on globalization
* feminist perspectives on objectification
* feminist perspectives on power
* feminist perspectives on rape
* feminist perspectives on reproduction and the family
* feminist perspectives on science
* feminist perspectives on sex and gender
* feminist perspectives on sex markets
* feminist perspectives on the body
* feminist perspectives on the self
* feminist perspectives on trans issues



See also the entries in the
 Related Entries section
 below.