American Philosophies

Women in American society have also been marginalized and their unique perspectives have been often overlooked and many times simply discarded. Despite this forced invisibility, American women have contributed to worldwide feminist movements, often in uniquely American ways far different from their counterparts in other nations and cultures.

From childhood, Jane Addams (1860–1935) was deeply troubled by the blight of economic and social inequality. As a philosopher, social activist, and founder of Hull House, a settlement house for immigrants and the working poor in Chicago, her work focused on rehabilitating communities in theory and in practice, and rectifying inequalities not by phil-anthropic charity work, but by cultivating sympathetic understanding and mutual concern. Addams offered her principle of reciprocity as an important tool with which to approach the building of communities. Addams insisted that the interaction of otherwise separate social groups be treated as reciprocal, that is, as offering mutual benefit. Viewed in this way, what might otherwise become an impersonal philanthropic enterprise that serves to make more explicit the line between giver and taker becomes instead an opportunity for mutual enrichment and the sympathetic understanding necessary to create a community.

In the late twentieth century, feminist Carol Gilligan (1936–) wrote In a Different Voice: Psychological Theory and Women's Development (1982), calling for recognizing the different and valuable ways that women think and evaluate moral situations. Having done extensive study on moral and psychological development, Gilligan found most research to be biased toward the male point of view. Focusing instead on care for others and responsibility toward relationships, feminine morality should be valued for its own merits and not treated as secondary to a more masculine emphasis on rules, rights, and laws, according to Gilligan.

Catharine MacKinnon (1946–), an attorney, social activist, and writer, successfully argued that sexual harassment is, legally, a form of sexual discrimination. Her books and other writings have had a powerful impact on American and international movements in the legal status of pornography, hate speech, and women's rights. Other key contemporary American feminists are Sandra Harding (1935–), Nancy Fraser, Donna Haraway (1944–), and Alison Jaggar.