IS THERE SOMETHING SPECIAL ABOUT THE WAY WOMEN DO PHILOSOPHY, OR IS THAT JUST ANOTHER ESSENTIALIST IDEA HOLDING US BACK?

Women in philosophy are often asked to explain what they contribute to philosophy now that they are allowed to do philosophy professionally. Elly Vintiadis writes that “underlying this question is a sense that our voices are not seen as philosophers’ voices, but primarily as women’s voices. It is as if women would necessarily have a distinctive point of view, as a group, instead of having simply the individual points of view they take as philosophers.” 

In this article, Vintiadis discusses how women are in an epistemically privileged position to provide insights about certain phenomena that would otherwise be lost, such as inequalities of labor, injustice, metaphysics in pregnancy, and the ethics of care.

At the Nietzsche House in Sils im Engadin, Switzerland. Photo by Waltraud Grubitzsch/dpa/Getty