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