This is a list of women philosophers ordered alphabetically by surname. Although often overlooked in mainstream historiography, women have engaged in philosophy throughout the field's history. [1] [2] Some notable philosophers include Maitreyi [3] (1000 BCE), Gargi Vachaknavi (900 BCE), Ghosha (800 BCE), Hypatia of Alexandria (c. 370–415 CE), Anne Conway (1631–1679), Mary Wollstonecraft (1759–1797), Harriet Martineau (1802–1876), Sarah Margaret Fuller (1810–1850), Frances Power Cobbe (1822–1904), Vernon Lee (1856–1935), Edith Stein (1891–1942), Ayn Rand (1905–1982), Hannah Arendt (1906–1975), Simone de Beauvoir (1908–1986), Iris Murdoch (1919–1999), Elizabeth Anscombe (1919–2001), Mary Midgley (1919–2018), Philippa Foot (1920–2010), Mary Warnock (1924–2019), Joyce Mitchell Cook (1933–2015, the first African American woman to receive a Ph.D. in philosophy), Cora Diamond (born 1937), and Susan Haack (born 1945). [4]
From the fall of the Western Roman Empire in the 5th century C.E. to the Renaissance in the 16th century.
It is still debated when the Modern period began, but some scholars place 15th and 16th century philosophers into the category of “Early Modern Philosophy”, and those in the 17th through the early 20th centuries into the categories of Modern and “Post Modern” philosophy.
Women have made significant contributions to philosophy throughout the history of the discipline. Ancient examples of female philosophers include Maitreyi, Gargi Vachaknavi, Hipparchia of Maroneia and Arete of Cyrene. Some women philosophers were accepted during the medieval and modern eras, but none became part of the Western canon until the 20th and 21st century, when some sources indicate that Simone Weil, Susanne Langer, G.E.M. Anscombe, Hannah Arendt, and Simone de Beauvoir entered the canon.
Alison Mary Jaggar is an American feminist philosopher born in England. She is College Professor of Distinction in the Philosophy and Women and Gender Studies departments at the University of Colorado, Boulder and Distinguished Research Professor at the University of Birmingham in the United Kingdom. She was one of the first people to introduce feminist concerns in to philosophy.