Women and Intellectual Empowerment

you may have heard of persephone

the emo queen of the underworld brooding

and sulking yet seductive and terrifying

this great goddess appears as a liminal

figure in

other people’s stories she usually shows

up when heroes must travel to hades the

underworld to complete some tasks or

reckon with themselves

now she is known as the goddess of

destruction but in the original stories

involving her

the name persephone is preceded by words

that translate into holy

dreadful and thoughtful holy persephone

dreadful persephone

thoughtful persephone what is so

terrifying about this goddess

especially since we don’t really know

much about her

before she became queen of the

underworld this goddess may have had a

name

but it wasn’t often uttered in fact she

was simply referred to as

corey which translates into girl or

maiden or worse

receptacle after she is violently

abducted by the god of the dead

she comes to have the reputation for

being clever and discerning

as i’ll come to know her as but how did

this happen

no one knows it’s not written anywhere

for now we will leave persephone to

wander the underworld

a few thousand years later i’m sitting

in my office in my new job at marquette

university

teaching philosophy i am 29 years old

given that most people think

philosophers look like this i remember

thinking that it might be helpful to

have

me a younger woman with a phd in this

male-dominated discipline

as a professor not just for women in my

classes

but maybe for everyone

yet as i reflected honestly in my

classes

i saw what research and education varies

to be true

men dominated class conversations and

had the appearance of smarts

while women kept quiet overall so

i started asking some women to come to

my office i wanted to encourage them to

hear their good ideas

and after talking with dozens of them i

had an

insight it was an idea for a book

it appeared to me both in scope and

style complete

for now we will leave me at my desk to

work out the details of that book

what i am interested in is intellectual

empowerment

what it is how it happens and what keeps

people

especially those who identify as women

and girls or who identify as gender

fluid or non-binary

from feeling empowered in this very

specific way

the slogan of women’s empowerment

loosely correlates to supporting women’s

causes around the world

whether that’s materially socially

spiritually emotionally and so on

my interest in intellectual empowerment

connects to some of those ways but is

distinctive from them

intellectual empowerment pertains

specifically to the ways in which people

know that their ideas can have value

if a person is undermined in her

capacity as a knower

to use philosopher miranda fricker’s

phrase not only does she herself suffer

but the whole world is harmed as a

result

fewer contributions of knowledge lead to

less of it available in the world

which harms everyone

but first let’s understand the landscape

of intellectual

disempowerment in education

it’s well documented that boys speak at

a rate of four to one to girls

girls receive more comments about their

personality than they do about their

smarts from their teachers

and they receive less quality feedback

overall

in college men consistently

underestimate the gpas of women in their

classes

and still curricular materials at all

levels are male dominated

in the workplace while half of the

workforce is women

we do not see change happening in ways

that value and promote women as

thinkers while we may wish to think that

progress is happening in those ways

it isn’t and the appearance of progress

is not itself progress

studies show that in the workplace women

are less likely to speak than their male

counterparts

and when they do speak their ideas are

less likely to be

engaged more moreover when their ideas

are heard they are subjected to

stereotypes

resulting in pervasive bias in the

workplace

finally women when they are heard

especially in positions of leadership

receive a lot more negative and critical

feedback and performance reviews

finally the art world provides an

especially painful example

of this landscape a massive 2020 study

of 1.5 million pieces of art sold at

auction

reveals that multiple people can assess

an anonymous work of art to be worth a

certain amount but that

one network of art is revealed to have

been created by a woman

that value plummets by an astonishing

47.6

at auction a painting’s value might be

assessed at

forty thousand dollars say but when it’s

revealed that that art was created by a

woman

that value plummets to twenty thousand

nine hundred sixty dollars

at auction the artist may be good for a

woman

but not valued as an artist if she were

obviously her art which is an expression

of her ideas

would be valued at the same amount that

mensart is

those are just a few examples of the

ways that women and girls can be

disempowered when women are actively

disempowered

we can point to someone who has wronged

them like a teacher who doesn’t call on

girls in class

or a boss who speaks over their

employees at a company

i left academia for five years to teach

english to high school girls

yeah it was wild and

when i would teach the active and

passive voices of writing

i would often use this example for the

active voice

maria kicked the puppy

then the girls would all get upset

when i taught the passive voice i would

use this example

the puppy was kicked

and then the girls would really get

upset they wanted to know

who would kick a puppy

sometimes it’s not evident who is

inflicting the pain but the result

is the same i remember another example

from that high school one day students

looped out that my spouse teaches

english at a local all-boys high school

so naturally they wanted to skype

together for a class

we did and on that day i saw the

dramatic change in these girls who the

day before had come into class

doing cartwheels writing math equations

on the board and arguing about politics

suddenly in response to different

questions during this joint class

the girls would say well i don’t know

but and it’s only my opinion but

where had my girls gone

what had happened not only to their

confidence but to their belief that

their ideas had value and they have a

right to say them aloud

when we debriefed the next day i asked

them how it went

i didn’t like it one girl said and the

others readily agreed

did the boys do anything wrong i asked

no were they impolite argumentative or

me

no they all agreed and the boys weren’t

they were kind and thoughtful

interlocutors

but the puppies had been kicked

such is this force of widespread

intellectual disempowerment

how can we help care for women and girls

in this

specific way

of course there is no easy solution to

this problem

but i propose three ideas

first advocate the idea i have is one of

active advocacy

where people in relative positions of

power do the reaching out

instead of simply saying yes when

someone asks them for help

there’s a palpable difference between

saying i want to write that

recommendation letter for you

or i think you should apply for that

promotion and just agreeing to do those

things when asked

both are important of course but we must

seek out opportunities for others that

align with

their desires and if we don’t know what

someone might want or how someone might

want to be recognized

we should do something novel and ask her

advocacy shouldn’t be a solo enterprise

however

as unfortunately most of the work of

advocacy

falls to women especially women of color

so another piece of this puzzle

is to help create a culture of efficacy

by insisting that

all do their part moreover

as those doing it though advocacy work

is work

and ought to be counted as such an

employee reviews and compensation

second amplify

women in president obama’s office

popularized the concept of amplification

which provides a powerful corrective to

intellectual disempowerment

amplification describes how a person can

elevate the ideas of another

legitimizing both the ideas and its

speaker

in the process it happens like this

maria says an idea to a group of people

rather than letting that idea detach

from a speaker and float away

the person wanting to affirm that idea

says maria’s name

along with the idea amplifying both

the idea then becomes maria’s idea

i bet that nearly all women and girls

can remember a time in their lives where

their ideas have been ignored

or even stolen i can think of many times

in my own life

where my good ideas have turned up

elsewhere with others being praised for

my work

and though it’s a tricky cerebral issue

to figure out who

owns ideas the plain fact is this

when women and girls aren’t given credit

for their insights

especially if or when those insights are

claimed by others

their sense of themselves as thinkers

and therefore themselves

as selves is diminished

third adore

i am convinced that amplification and

adoration are reduced to mere

tools or techniques if not grounded in

adoration

this word is not too much from the latin

a arterare

the word literally means to call to

someone held in high esteem

in religious contexts it’s understood as

worship

but i’m understanding it here as a human

to human connection

and showing the ways that we call out to

others holding them

in high esteem by virtue of their

inherent dignity

without adoration actions can bring

hollow and inauthentic

this is in part why diversity

initiatives can tend to elicit eye rolls

from employees

or people can feel tokenized on accounts

of their gender or other identity

markers adoration

is not easy to cultivate in a world

steeped in insincerity and quick

judgments

especially online but that’s what makes

it

so important because it’s a commitment

day in and day out to co-workers

colleagues students

and all members of our human community

adoration affirms the actuality and

potentiality of another

we are all vulnerably human and

beautifully so

as i often tell my students what you

think

who you are and what you do matters

and i don’t think that many people

especially young people

hear this enough advocacy and

amplification

when rooted in adoration lets them know

this to be true

and now we’re in a position to talk

about why any of this

matters intellectual empowerment

leads to epistemic joy which is a joy in

coming to understand oneself and

appreciate

others in our individual and shared

capacities to know

we don’t tend to think about joy so much

and it’s easy to understand

why given all of the injustices in our

world

but the joy i have in mind is both

existence and aspirational

and it’s worth fighting for

the word epistemic comes from one of the

greek words for knowledge

epistemic knowing that our ideas have

value

and contribute to shaping how we

understand the universe

is an essential aspect of our lives this

point is essential for everyone of

course

but it’s especially important now for

those who have long time excluded from

that intellectual life

now my idea of intellectual empowerment

is a strange one though

because it does mean that a person must

be allowed to be wrong

and also must be allowed to fail in her

ideas

it does not mean that a person’s ideas

are right simply by virtue of her having

them

but it does mean that a person has a

right to those ideas

the knower then is able to take up the

hard mental work of critique

deliberation

and dialogue this feeling is

validating even if or when she makes

mistakes

indeed we might say that making mistakes

is

critical in helping a person feel this

thick sense of joy

especially in contrast to gender schemas

that put enormous pressure on women and

girls

to be perfect and not make such mistakes

yes i’m saying that making mistakes can

bring us joy

because intellectual empowerment is

laced with this huge human capacity

and epidemic joy isn’t just about being

right or having a seat at the table

it takes a lot of work to expand the

ways that we view women

in this way epistemic joy then

names the feeling we have in knowing our

intellectual potential

it is thus maybe our knowing feeling

when a person experiences this knowing

feeling

she is able to feel herself more fully

move through the world

she can expand and contract fail and

succeed

and act not just in fear of being wrong

or not knowing enough she can greet the

world with

brave wonder not feeling like she has to

be invulnerable

a constant expert or unshakeable in her

beliefs

she can mess up fail succeed learn

compete

collaborate be critical of

herself and though it may seem odd

this person becomes poetry

taking what’s expected of her by virtue

of her gender

and rearranging as poets do to show

a new way of being her way of being to

the point of view that only

she has in truth really

we should all be homeless

so back to me at my desk

all those years ago after about a decade

of trying to write that book and never

having the time to do so

i asked a friend of mine from grad

school to help turn this vision into

reality

the book now exists as a multi-authored

volume of 20 women experts in philosophy

translating their expertise to their

younger counterparts

it’s a good example i think of advocacy

amplification

and adoration the chapters cite loads of

women philosophers

and the tone of the book really honors

its readers

the cover of the book there’s a

pomegranate

which represents persephone if you

remember the little we do know of the

smith

she eats some pomegranate seeds and thus

must spend

half the year on earth and half in hades

the only divinity

to rule in two worlds

i have loved her since i was little

though as i said

we don’t really know much about her

so i decided to write her story

as the prologue to that book that i had

named all those years ago in my office

philosophy for girls i describe how she

maps her worlds

finds her own voice and figures it out

in short she goes into her own

consciousness

she goes into her own intellectual

powers

and yes those powers can be terrible

but we are that person

we too must learn to navigate our worlds

with its home work school relationships

passions identities

and like persephone we learned that

there is power

in being thoughtful and discerning it

may seem like a brief amount of time to

figure it all out

in the short mortal life that we have

and in many ways it is

but many have come before

and many will follow we will all take

our own paths

with our own voices knowing that there

is an ancient goddess who still roams

her mouth doing the same

and if they listen very carefully

across all space and through all time

we can hear her adoring us

[Applause]

you