Thursday 8 March 2018

Time to #PressforProgress in Philosophy!


Today is International Women’s Day. This year, 2018, the theme is #PressforProgress.

My #PressforProgress is to bring to light the visibility of women (which includes celebrating women’s achievements and challenging bias and stereotypes) and, in particular, to press for gender parity.

My original aim in researching Shepherd was to make an Early Modern woman philosopher visible. Although there has been a little bit of research done on her I felt she needed to be more celebrated for her achievements, such as her two long Treatises and for being so influential in her day.

As part of my #PressforProgress this year, through my research on Shepherd I will:


Challenge stereotypes and bias by promoting and celebrating Mary Shepherd as a role model whose achievements show that abstract thinking and philosophical debating is not a male preserve. Even some contemporary feminists have fallen into believing and perpetuating the stereotype that perhaps abstract philosophy and adversarial philosophical debates don’t (naturally) suit women, contributing to the lack of women philosophers. However, I think Mary Shepherd shows women are just as naturally suited to the rigorous demands of philosophy and its various styles of argumentation, logic and debate as men. Women’s limited representation in philosophy is not due to women’s inherent abilities but rather restrictions imposed on them by male-dominated academia, which still struggles to include them in educational institutions (from being given the opportunity to engage in academic study as a student through to gaining professorships), academic research, publishing and discourse within the wider philosophical community. Philosophy has a long way to go before parity is achieved. This is something which needs to be addressed urgently because as a discipline it even lags behind STEM! It’s time philosophy pressed for progress in an active and successful way! ‘Deeds not Words’ is what is needed for gender parity in philosophy! Actions speak louder than just words!

The lack of parity makes many women in philosophy, including myself, invisible even to this day. So I shall continue to forge positive visibility for women through my research of women in the history of philosophy.  Shepherd is still rather invisible in philosophy which is why I also published a book on her early this year on this blog so that she emerges out of this cocoon of invisibility. In doing so, I hope to generate interest in her philosophy so that she becomes part of the philosophical canon which would then go towards making up the numbers for 50/50 parity between men and women in the history of philosophy.

Positive visibility and celebrating women’s achievements both highlight the importance of giving women credit for their contributions. Just as Shepherd should be credited for her work and ideas, so we should call it out when a woman philosopher is being written out of history these days by not receiving the credit and positivity she is due for her research contribution. In the spirit of this, I endeavour to have my contribution to academic scholarship respected and acknowledged, as part of the ongoing movement of #PressforProgress. Otherwise, we are ironically perpetuating the cycle of sexism if we make contemporary women philosophers like myself invisible whilst seemingly addressing women’s invisibility by researching, presenting and publishing on lesser-known women in the history of philosophy.  

You can join me in pressing for progress by going to:

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Shepherd vol 2: Bibliography

 Bibliography: