The rubric "feminist philosophy" applies to work in many philosophical subareas, often spanning several disciplines. The work is united by its authors' commitment to feminism in some form and by their belief that an engagement between feminism and philosophy will have both theoretical and practical benefits for everyone.

Some work in feminist philosophy focuses on philosophical issues that have arisen in the course of feminist political activism. Not surprisingly, much of this work is in political philosophy or ethics. Some work in feminist political philosophy consists of the articulation and defense of feminist theory, whereas other work examines the relationships between feminist political theory and other more general political theories, like liberalism and socialism. Much early work in feminist ethics dealt with issues in practical ethics that were of particular concern to women, such as abortion and affirmative action.

Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, however, feminist...