School of thought

Feminist Philosophy

Movement

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Classification

Period
c. 1792 CE onward
Regions
europe
Domains
Epistemology , Ethics , Political Philosophy

Overview

Feminist philosophy interrogates the ways gender shapes knowledge, ethics, politics, and experience. Its roots reach back to Mary Wollstonecraft's A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792) and John Stuart Mill's The Subjection of Women (1869). In the twentieth century, de Beauvoir's existentialist claim that 'one is not born, but rather becomes, a woman' catalyzed new waves of feminist thought. Feminist thinkers have exposed how philosophical traditions have marginalized women's perspectives, and developed new frameworks — from standpoint epistemology to the ethics of care — that take seriously the situated, embodied nature of knowing and acting.

Key ideas

  • Gender as Construct: De Beauvoir argued that femininity is not a biological given but a social construction. Butler radicalized this insight, arguing that gender is performative — constituted through repeated acts rather than expressing an inner essence.
  • Intersectionality: Coined by Kimberle Crenshaw, this concept insists that gender cannot be understood in isolation from race, class, sexuality, and other axes of oppression. bell hooks and other Black feminist thinkers showed that mainstream feminism often universalized the experience of white, middle-class women.
  • Ethics of Care: Carol Gilligan and Nel Noddings challenged the dominance of abstract, rule-based ethics (Kantian and utilitarian) by foregrounding care, relationships, and responsiveness to particular others as central moral concerns.

Key figures

Mary Wollstonecraft · Simone de Beauvoir · Judith Butler · bell hooks · Luce Irigaray · Martha Nussbaum

Influenced by

References