PAM & ME/DIA

Celebrating Women in Philosophy Reading List

To celebrate women’s contributions to philosophy, we have created a reading list of books and online resources that explore classic female philosophers and recent feminist philosophy. Despite the lack of opportunity in academic philosophy and their apparent invisibility in the field, women have been practising philosophers for many centuries. Some of the great social and cultural movements have also been enriched by the female minds. Explore books and articles on feminist philosophy, gender oppressions, and women’s empowerment below.

Natural Goodness, by Philippa Foot, Clarendon Press

Down Girl: The Logic of Misogyny, by Kate Manne

Categories We Live By: The Construction of Sex, Gender, Race, and Other Social Categories, by Ásta

Pornography: A Philosophical Introduction,by Mari Mikkola

Scarlet A: The Ethics, Law, and Politics of Ordinary Abortion by Katie Watson

Essays on Ethics and Feminism by Sabina Lovibond 

Differences: Rereading Beauvoir and Irigaray, Edited by Emily Anne Parker and Anne van Leeuwen

The Social and Political Philosophy of Mary Wollstonecraft, edited by Sandrine Bergès and Alan Coffee

Simone de Beauvoir: The Making of an Intellectual Woman by Toril Moi

The Well-Ordered Universe: The Philosophy of Margaret Cavendish by Deborah Boyle

‘British Feminist Thought’ in The Oxford Handbook of British Philosophy in the Nineteenth Century  from Oxford Handbooks Online

‘Feminism in Philosophy’ in The Oxford Handbook of Contemporary Philosophy from Oxford Handbooks Online

‘The 18th century: Amazons of the pen’, in Feminism: A Very Short Introduction

‘Virgins or whores? Feminist critiques of sexuality’ in Sexuality: VSI

‘Hypatia’ in Wandering Poets and Other Essays on Late Greek Literature and Philosophy from Oxford Scholarship Online