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23 

WHAT CAN A WOMAN KNOW? EPISTEMIC 

BIAS AS DEPERSONALIZATION 
 

Francis Eshemomoh IKHIANOSIME 
Department of Philosophy, 

Seminary of All Saints, Uhiele-Ekpoma. 
franklmore@yahoo.com 

 
Abstract 
Since such publications like Lorraine Code’s essay, “Is the sex of the 
knower epistemically significant?” and Sandra Harding’s “Is Gender a 
variable in conceptions of rationality: a survey of issues” the conversation 
of the relation between gender and knowledge has remained an 
intellectually polemic area of discussion in epistemology, particularly, 
feminist epistemology. The relation between gender and knowledge is 
not merely theoretical, but it also involves power relations. Power 
dynamics have a lot to play with knowledge acquisition and how we 
accord truth values to an epistemic agent. Although, mainstream 
epistemology pretends to be gender neutral with the knowing subject, 
such claim can arguably be said to be nominal rather than practical. This 
paper interrogates particularly how we determine knowing subjects. It 
argues that the female gender or woman has sometimes been treated 
with discrimination in determining whether she is a knowing subject or 
not. This paper further situates this discrimination as fallouts of biases or 
prejudices. Far from creating an unwholesome epistemic situation such 
biases are associated with power. Epistemic bias against women apart 
from showing how gendered-power structure of societies affect the 
shape and possibilities of knowledge production, it further argues that 
such epistemic bias also depersonalizes the woman and this is a form of 
dehumanization. This paper concludes with an argument for an inclusive 
gender-balanced structure of epistemic relations as a pathway that can 
create a more robust epistemic relation for knowledge. It is believed this 
can further strengthen the understanding of the human person as an 
epistemic agent. 
 



Section II: Philosophical Perspectives And Human Formation    313 

Keywords: Epistemic bias, Depersonalization, Gender, Human person, 
Power dynamics. 
 
Introduction 
The goal of every cognitive or philosophical inquiry is the desire to 
know. Aristotle begins the opening line of his, Metaphysics, stating this 
fundamental truth, saying, “All men by nature desire to know.”1 This 
desire to know is not just fundamental to human nature it is also part of 
man’s evolutionary make up and destiny. Man as homo sapiens (intelligent 
being) is also homo quaerens (thinking and knowing being). The history of 
epistemology in the Western tradition from Plato till date is largely 
concerned with “How do we know what we know?” “Do we really know 
anything at all?” Much of the efforts in traditional epistemology have 
focused not on the knower, per say, but, on what the knower can know. 
The concern was more on what can pass as knowledge to make it 
legitimate or genuine in the face of skeptical opposition which argues 
that we cannot know anything at all or what we can know is limited. It is 
this challenge that gave direction to epistemology for a long while. 
However, from the 1970s and more robustly, around the 1980s new 
epistemic questions have been asked about who this anonymous “we” 
referred to in the common interrogatives? The critical interrogation 
basically seeks to know, like Lorraine Code asks, “Is the sex of the 
knower epistemologically significant?”2 It further seeks to find out 
whether gender has any role to play with the way knowledge is acquired 
or accepted.  For a long time, orthodox epistemology claims that in the 
search for knowledge, the gender of the knower was significantly neutral.  

However, this assumption has been exposed by these critical 
interrogations, which has come under the umbrella of feminist 
epistemology as hypocritical. Code, for instance, argues that “the fact of 
being male or female seems to be fundamental to one’s way of being a 
person in such a way that it could have a strong influence upon one’s 
way of knowing”3 She argues that in the pursuit of knowledge, there are 
sometimes gender biases and discrimination at least historically speaking. 
Women sometimes are not allowed access to certain aspects of learning. 
From this, at least, biological makeup creates a limitation of cognitive 
capacity. Thus, there is both a type of knowledge that a woman can 
acquire and what is accessible to her. Miranda Fricker has argued 
vigorously in her book, Epistemic Injustice, Ethics and the Power of knowing, 
that this politics of epistemic practice “has an irrepressible connection to 
social power, or that social disadvantage can produce unjust social 
disadvantage”4. The point is that is there is such politics of social 
stratification; it also leads to situations of cognitive authority or 
powerlessness. Thus, gender plays a role in knowledge acquisition and 



314 Formation of the Human Person in the 21st Century 

this sometimes creates an air of imbalance. Apart from an imbalance in 
power relations, knowledge leads to how we are conceptualized, 
classified, or personalized. This paper, which seeks both to address issues 
in this epistemic imbalance, also seeks to expose how biases in epistemic 
relations and conceptualization lead to depersonalization. It seeks to 
further argue ways in which there can be epistemological inclusivity. The 
end point is to both have a normative vision of epistemology as well that 
of the human person. This paper adopts analytic and expository 
methodologies. 
 
Understanding the Feminist Thesis and Philosophy 
Feminist epistemology is a form of social epistemology. Social 
epistemology refers broadly to the evaluation of social dimensions of 
knowledge. Knowledge within social epistemology is not taken solely as 
an individual activity but sometimes as a social or a collective 
achievement. Thus, social epistemology deals with those social means of 
arriving at knowledge or social justification for our knowledge claims. 
Feminist epistemology “examines the relations between gender and 
knowledge, where gender is understood not as an attribute of 
individuals, but rather as an axis of social relations.”5 The concern of 
feminist epistemology is based on social bifurcations along lines of 
gender. Society is conceived, at least from this biological point of view of 
things existing either as male or female. The concern of feminist 
epistemology is an examination of the connection between power 
relations of gender and knowledge.6  This concern is different from 
feminine epistemology which concerns itself what ways women can 
know. Although, the broad scope of feminist epistemology concerns all 
such discussions include those hitherto known as feminine 
epistemology. Heide Grasswick notes that the scope of analysis for 
feminist epistemology is broadened beyond gender, but involves all such 
divisions of race, class and sexuality and all such axes of oppression. 
Feminist epistemology becomes a face of ‘liberatory epistemologies’. 
 Feminist epistemology is a reaction to an overall social class grouping 
arguably created by radical systems like Marxism. It seeks to overcome 
the epistemic disadvantage for belonging to a particular class or gender, 
in this case, the female gender. Marxism with all its variants, helped to 
create social and class divisions in society and this had its own power play 
of one group having superiority over the other; the bourgeoisie over the 
proletariat. This class system reinforced an age-old division and 
domination like patriarchy and androcentric biases arguably perpetuated 
by some world religions, where women are given a secondary or an 
inferior class position. This class oppression saw the rise of women's 
liberation movement (WLM) and other forms of self-actualization 



Section II: Philosophical Perspectives And Human Formation    315 

movements like feminism.  From movements to philosophy, feminist 
epistemology seeks to address situations of imbalances created by class, 
race or gender superiority. 
 The concerns of feminist epistemology are not just about the power 
imbalance, but also involve some aspects that are moral. The imbalances 
caused by class bifurcation are also moral. They impede on the virtues of 
such purportedly epistemic inferior other, like women. If women are 
regarded as inferior, they are less likely to be trustworthy and their 
testimony easily dismissed on the grounds of a default class stratification 
that deflates their epistemic credibility. The concern of trustworthiness 
bears on the virtues of agents. Therefore, gender imbalance has a 
crystallizing effect not just on power relations, but also on virtues. 
Feminist epistemology seeks to interrogate all these issues that are the 
fallout of gender and their relations with knowledge. The effects of 
gender biases have an overarching aftereffect in many areas within the 
overall epistemological framework. The scope of feminist epistemology 
thus deals with the many intersecting areas of women’s lives and feminist 
philosophy. 
 The goal of feminist philosophy is not just for justice, but to give 
meaning to women’s history and to seek an inclusive philosophy or 
epistemology. Nevertheless, critics against the foundations of feminist 
philosophy argue that feminist philosophy generally begins with an 
assumption that women are oppressed or marginalized and the same 
experiences of women are universalized rather than taken within 
contexts.7 No matter how the arguments go, we cannot deny that 
feminist epistemology is radically transformative of how women are seen 
and their experiences evaluated and also that the issues of epistemic 
marginalization on the grounds of gender are no longer left to silence. 
The starting point for a meaning discourse is the question of biases in 
epistemic relations. 
 
Knowing Subjects and Biases in Epistemic Relations 
Knowing is a function of different variables and how one can know and 
what a knower can also know are also impacted by different variables. 
The main thrust of feminist epistemology is an interrogation into the 
role and place of gender in knowledge practices. Kristen Campbell argues 
that for feminist theories of knowledge, the gender of the knower is 
epistemologically significant and that deconstructive feminist 
epistemologies maintain that the Western subject of reason is not 
sexually neutral but presupposes a masculine knower.8 This is why 
feminist scholars like Sandra Harding and Patricia Hill Collins argue for 
a reconstruction of new models for knowledge with the woman as a 



316 Formation of the Human Person in the 21st Century 

knowing subject. Therefore, we cannot really ignore the sex of the 
knowing subject.  
 Be that as it may, within feminist epistemology, there is the question 
of who the knowing subject should be whether the female knower or the 
feminist knower, or both? But, to pursue this would be creating another 
imperfect situation that first gave birth to feminist epistemology. 
Lorraine Code has elaborately written on how the female knower can be 
impeded and rendered epistemically inaccessible to some knowledge. 
Constraints on the sex of the knower can lead to constraints in 
knowledge in general. This creates a situation of ‘epistemic obscurity’. 
This kind of situation can be warranted with certain kinds of knowledge 
limited or designated as strictly for male. In responding to the 
interrogative, what can a woman know? It seems that the process of 
socialization sometimes, limit what certain persons can know based on 
their gender. This kind of situation creates a biased epistemic situation. 
Some of these social systems or epistemic situations are reinforced by 
male chauvinistic teachings and philosophy. For instance, Aristotle in his 
Republic regards woman as irrational, higher than slaves and lacking in 
authority. He even argues that women are meant to be subject to their 
husbands and that they are sometimes deceptive.9 The Danish 
Philosopher, Soren Kierkegaard holds that “the attainment of the ethical 
and religious levels of existence to be open to men only; women are 
aesthetic being”. In Roman mythology, women are regarded as 
Dionysian creatures, meaning they are for merrymaking and wining. 
 The putative designation of women into inferior catalogues to that of 
men is a function of epistemic biases. Biases are “persistent and 
widespread psychological tendencies that can be detrimental to 
objectivity and rationality.”10 In logical thinking, when a premise is 
implicitly accepted in our theories and methods, it becomes a 
philosophical bias. Philosophical biases are acquired from professional 
practice and other disciplinary traditions that defines a scientific 
paradigm. Thus, when we have used a basis for a long time, implicitly, it 
becomes foundational, and this makes one undermine the strength or 
foundation upon which such claim rests. Biases could either be 
cognitive, conflict of interests, statistical, or prejudices. Biases could also 
be understood in different contexts, like biases in the media, academia, 
etc. Biases could be explicit or implicit. It is explicit when it is intended 
and implicit when it is not intended. Gender bias against women and 
androcentric cataloguing of women can arguably fall under implicit bias. 
Philosophically, implicit bias suggests that “people can act on the basis of 
prejudice and stereotypes without intending to do so”.11 Implicit bias lead 
to discriminatory behaviour in favour or against a subject, and these raise 
metaphysical, epistemological and ethical questions.  



Section II: Philosophical Perspectives And Human Formation    317 

 Evaluative judgments based on implicit bias or any such biases can be 
termed epistemic bias. Epistemic bias can be implicated in epistemic 
injustice. The wrong labelling of women has epistemological 
implications, including epistemic injustices. Jules Holroyd and Katherine 
Puddifoot12 identified five types of epistemic injustice that can be due 
from such epistemic relation. The first is testimonial injustice, where a 
person is given less credibility than they deserve due to stereotypes about 
the competence or sincerity of those with their social identity. This 
thought is explored in Miranda Fricker’s book, Epistemic Injustice: Power 
and the Ethics of Knowing, 2007. The second is epistemic appropriation 
where the contribution to knowledge provided by a person is not 
recognized as their contribution and is instead attributed to someone 
else. This form is deeply explored by Emmalon Davis.13 The third type 
of injustice from epistemic bias is epistemic exploitation and this occurs 
when members of a marginalized group are expected or required to 
educate members of privileged groups about injustices that are faced by 
those who share their social identity. This form is explored by Nora 
Berenstain.14 The fourth form of injustice due from epistemic bias is 
what Miranda Fricker identified as Hermeneutical injustice when some 
people are unjustly excluded from contributing to the shared conceptual 
resources that are widely used in a society. The fifth kind of injustice is 
contributory injustice, which occurs when an agent is wilfully ignorant 
in using conceptual resources that thwart the ability of others to 
contribute to the knowledge community. This form is elaborately 
explored in the thoughts of Kristie Dotson.15 Women arguably suffer all 
the forms of injustices outlined above by epistemic biases against them. 
 Be that as it may, biased epistemic labelling of women imparts on the 
qualitative difference in how we accord trust or truth-worthiness to 
women as knowing subjects or not. With man given a status of an 
epistemic superior, it renders without interrogation, that women’s 
knowledge are inferior and subjective. In traditional epistemology, the 
gender of the knower has, for the most, been treated as a “featureless 
abstraction,”16 while for the least, this knower, in an uncontested given, 
has presumptuously been an imaginary male. This gender-biased 
situation presents a problem of knowledge, granted that knowing is a 
combination of both the objective and subjective factors. While the 
objective component of knowledge is what is known, the subjective 
component is the knower. John Bewaji has argued that the subjective 
component has mostly been ignored in classical epistemology and this 
has largely resulted in impartial accounts of knowledge.17  
 Arguably, the undermining of the subjective component of 
knowledge, in this case, the female knower, can be due to how the 
objective component has been appreciated. What is known is a product 



318 Formation of the Human Person in the 21st Century 

of many factors, including individual creativity, social conditions, 
location of the knower, affective sides, etc. These conditions have also 
generally led to social roles and how men and women apply themselves 
to different tasks or activities. This in turn imparts on what can be 
known. For instance, women are more inclined into sewing clothes, 
cooking, doing domestic chores, etc., while men are generally disposed 
to doing some more mechanical and physical jobs and roles like fixing 
stalled cars, mowing the laws, etc. These polarised gender roles impact 
what particular people are inclined to knowing. The consequence is that 
it leaves knowledge for the most to be sexually differentiated by practical 
expectation. Nevertheless, the fact that men have applied themselves to 
particular roles does not mean women lack the cognitive capacity to do 
so and vice versa. Hence, knowledge being a sexually differentiated 
product by practical expectation does not necessarily mean a logical 
necessity, that is, because men are expected to always mow the lawns, for 
instance, does not mean women cannot do it. Hence, to completely 
delimit women’s knowledge based on practical expectation, or social 
default on certain issues, for instance, is to create a lopsided account for 
knowledge situation ab initio. The consequent effect is that this affects the 
overall subjective component or condition for knowledge.  
 The challenge of epistemic biases to the subjective component of 
knowledge mirrors the overall questions of marginality discussed in 
feminist epistemology. There are different forms of gender marginality 
or exclusion that affect knowledge production. For instance, when 
women are refused admission into certain schools of learning, they are 
marginalized both institutionally and epistemologically. This is one of 
the forms of marginality which affects what a woman can know and it 
only resurfaces the question of who a knowing subject should be.  
Lorraine Code surmises, that “as long as the view prevails that women 
cannot know according to the highest criteria for establishing knowledge, 
it seems that they are in fact not just marginalized but excluded, confined 
somewhere beyond the limits of both marginality and centrality”.18 
Therefore, the sex of the knower is epistemologically significant.   
 The sex of the knower is important because in a certain way, it gives 
grounds for justification of what we claim to know and epistemic 
justification aims at the truth in a very strong way. For instance, we are 
more likely to ask, someone a question that we think is likely to produce 
the right answer. If we were to ask the time for Mass today, we are more 
inclined to ask the priest, because we believe, he would be a more 
justified epistemic agent. These are the issues about the subjective 
component of knowledge. The properties of a knowing subject are not 
just on account of his cognitive capacity, but also by its location, position 
as well as gender. These add up to what makes the knower a viable 



Section II: Philosophical Perspectives And Human Formation    319 

epistemic agent or a truth-bearer. If women have been largely 
marginalized and this is allowed to gain enough ground, then, we we 
cannot claim that the sex of the knower is not epistemically significant.  

Ordinarily, proposing the sex of the knower casts doubt on the 
autonomy of reason. In our commonsense assumption, we really do not 
require the gender of a person to determine the rationality of a claim; 
rather, it is a function of the coherence in thought, logic and strong 
appeal to reason and truth. This assumption that gender is unimportant 
has nevertheless been contested by scholars like Edward Craig19 and 
Miranda Fricker.20 The epistemic duo has argued that matters of truth 
and rationality are inextricably tied to power and social identities. Fricker 
tries to explain how social power enters into epistemic practice by 
explaining who knows? Fricker uses Craig’s framework to explain this 
relationship. Craig in explaining the meaning of “know” imagines a case 
of an epistemic “state of nature” in which we seek true belief in order to 
survive. In this state, we have a fundamental need to acquire true beliefs. 
This desire for truth drives our practice and this, in turn, leads to seeing 
“good informants” people who would tell us the truth as whether p-  in 
order to multiply our epistemic resources.21 Therefore, to distinguish a 
good informant from a bad one, three features are identified, namely, (i) 
competence (ii) trustworthiness (iii) indicator-properties. Knowledge in 
this case is enshrined in a good informant. What it means is that 
someone who is trustworthy and competent is said to have rational 
authority. These properties are for the most social properties. Hence, if 
we take a woman on the basis of some social exclusion and epistemic 
marginalization as being a bad informant, she, therefore, is being 
excluded from rationality or being a good sources of knowledge. Hence, 
rationality is generally a function of social factors, not just some internal 
epistemic properties. In this wise, if a woman is disdained as a bad 
informant, then, she is already excluded from being a good source of 
knowledge.  

Miranda Fricker has argued that rational authority has a lot to do 
with social power or powerlessness. When we find a credible person who 
has rational authority, he also possesses some social powers, because of 
the ability to tell the truth. The contrast to this is someone who lacks 
social authority is one who is powerless. This is not the only dimension 
that rational authority presents. The powerlessness due from lack of 
rational authority leads to a kind of depersonalisation. It leads to a 
metaphysical obscurity or oblivion. We are not likely to recognize as a 
person, someone we think lacks rational authority. The context of being 
a person goes beyond the physical features, but, one we strip of qualities 
enabling a person. Being a person goes beyond a biological make up, but 
also to some other extraneous factors, hence, we regard institutions 



320 Formation of the Human Person in the 21st Century 

sometimes as a juridic person. From an ethical point of view, a person 
can be conceived from the point of responsibility. If we deny that an 
individual is incapable of truth or knowledge, we absolve him of 
responsibility to any such claim; hence, we do not hold him accountable. 
Ethically, a person goes beyond biological features. The point here is, 
epistemic biases against women, have inadvertently led to some form of 
powerlessness and this kind of metaphysical obscurity leads to 
depersonalisation. Powerlessness diminishes one’s social and epistemic 
relevance as well as its authority. While, biases in epistemic relations are 
sometimes a function of historical androcentrism; seeing women from 
uninterrogated social misconstructions, this limitation depersonalizes. It 
suffices to examine the phenomenology of personhood briefly. 
 
The Phenomenology of Personhood and Depersonalization 
The question of personhood is essentially philosophical. The quality of 
being a person is metaphysical and even controversial. There are several 
theories on personhood and the term contrasts strongly with other 
related terms which are sometimes used interchangeably with it. 
Boethius as cited by Frederick Copleston defined the person as “an 
individual substance of a rational nature”.22 The implication of this 
definition which long dominated the whole of medieval philosophy 
holds that every human being is a person. For Aquinas, the disembodied 
soul is not a person because he loses at that point what gives it rationality. 
In Thomas Aquinas, the person is made up of body, soul and mind. 
Aquinas placed emphasis on the rational substance. 
 With Descartes on the other hand, the emphasis was changed. A 
person consists in self-consciousness. This is the naturalist 
epistemological tradition which is reflected in the writings of Locke and 
Hume. It does not place a premium on the body, but on consciousness 
and its ability to relate to the world and performing actions and being 
able to represent them. This naturalist position places emphasis on what 
a person can do. The emphasis is on ability rather than on any 
ontological criteria. A person is one on account of a consciousness that 
can be; a consciousness that can produce something or is doing 
something. Some critics have argued that a person is not brought into 
being on account of his functions. 
 The non-embodiment view of personhood contrasts with the 
position of embodied and embedded in the world. This is first captured 
in the philosophy of Edmund Husserl, but more concretely expressed in 
Martin Heidegger’s phenomenology of being-in-the-world. Dermont 
Moran argues that “In Husserl’s phenomenology, the heart of embodied 
selfhood is the person, understood as the unified, goal-directed center of 
action, bearer of rights and status, responsibilities and moral standing”.23 



Section II: Philosophical Perspectives And Human Formation    321 

For Heidegger, we are more defined on account of our experiences. 
Thus, persons are those whose experiences are meaningful in the world. 
Meaning, therefore, defines a person. The contributions of modern 
thinkers generally tend to regard freedom as the chief characteristic of 
the human person.24 The idea of person for the most in modern 
philosophy has a moral connotation unlike the metaphysical connotation 
that was emphasized in the scholastic and the medieval period. 
 The personalists view of personhood begins with a primordial 
distinction between “an individual” and “a person”. Copleston explains 
that the term “individual” is used in a pejorative sense, one that is 
essentially egocentric. The individual is the egocentric man.25 The 
individual is described on the biological level, a practical materialist, no 
moral vocation, a member of the crowd. The person, on the other hand, 
contrasts with this view and has a moral vocation. Copleston gives the 
personalist manifesto which expressly defines a person as: 

…a spiritual being constituted as such by a manner of 
subsistence and of independence in being; it maintains 
this subsistence by its adhesion to a hierarchy of values, 
freely adopted, assimilated and lived, by a responsible 
self-commitment and by a constant conversion; it thus 
unifies all its activity in liberty and develops, moreover, 
by means of creative acts, its own unique vocation.26 

With the personalists, a person is tied to a vocation which is fulfilled with 
social interaction and beyond. A person is a transcendental being, one 
who is an embodiment of collectivity. A person for the personalist is 
beyond being a member of the human species, but also one that can 
contribute to a purpose or vision. A person is beyond biology. Whereas 
an individual is anti-social being, a person is a social being. As a social 
being, “he is more than a mere being in the group, but one oriented 
towards a society of persons, and a society of persons is a society of free, 
morally responsible human beings”.27 This personalist view of a person is 
opposed to Marxism which creates both a social caste system and regards 
man only within his economic value or benefit. However, man is not 
conceived not from a parochial plane, but, from a holistic plane. 
Personalists like Emmanuel Mounier and even Karol Wojtyla are 
doctrines antithetical to individualism.  
 The personalist creed is a reaction to the perceived depersonalisation 
created by such philosophies which undermined the creative vision of 
man, his transcedentalness, axiological relevance or teleological goal of 
man, yet conceives him from a limited sense or on account of some 
metaphysical values. Personalism tends to give dignity to the human 
person and correct the Darwinian error that the difference between man 
and other terrestrial being is in degrees and not in kind. Darwinian 



322 Formation of the Human Person in the 21st Century 

evolutionary vision and the social engineering places man not at the 
centre of the cosmos but like every other creatures seeking survival. In 
personalism, a fundamental difference in the classification of all beings is 
the distinction between person and non-persons. Thus, in the words of 
Jacques Maritain: “Whenever we say that man is a person, we mean that 
he is more than a mere parcel of matter, more than an individual element 
in nature, such as is an atom, a blade of grass, a fly or an elephant…Man 
is an animal and an individual, but unlike other animals or 
individuals.” 28 Personalist thesis also holds man as having a dialogic 
relationship with the world like the I-Thou of Martin Buber. 
 Personalists also hold the dignity of the person of the individual. The 
quality of being a person is not dependent by this on variables such as 
intelligence or social prowess. Also, the quality of being a person cannot 
be derived by a cosmological reduction of any sort, but are functions of 
some irreducible conditions. It means that being a person is not a 
function of what one is able to do or not. Also, in personalism, the 
human person is relational and always in communion. He is never 
always alone.  “Relationship is not an optional accessory for the human 
person, but is essential to his personhood. He is a being-for-relation.”29 
Personalist see the human person’s strive for communion as a function 
of his rationality. Thus, the human person is never judged in isolation. 
To evaluate him in isolation from relationality is to both deny him 
rationality as well as depersonalize him. 
 The personalist view of a person is very metaphysical, conceiving of 
man beyond his physical features. However, epistemologically, the 
starting point for conceptualisation on personhood is rationality and 
epistemic responsibility. This understanding of personhood is more fluid 
beyond metaphysics. The fluid conception of personhood is one that 
makes us conceive  of a person in other senses like ethical, moral or legal. 
As an ethical term, it may refer to a mode being and as a legal term, it 
may refer one as a human individual, a partnership or a cooperation. 
Epistemologically, a person is not just a human being, because, the 
conception of a person would invoke the idea of an epistemic agency. An 
epistemic agent goes beyond a human person, but include also non-
human epistemic agency including collectivities like groups or 
institutions. This is the ground for discussing non-human epistemic 
agents as having group beliefs. Therefore, to depersonalise in the 
epistemological sense is to deny an epistemic agent of the ability to hold 
epistemic belief, at least, or knowledge at best. When, therefore, we deny 
an epistemic agent the privilege of having epistemic claims or knowledge, 
we depersonalise them. In this wise, when, women, as a consequence of 
epistemic bias suffer epistemic injustices, they at some level are 
depersonalised. This depersonalisation which is due from epistemic bias 



Section II: Philosophical Perspectives And Human Formation    323 

is not on account of women being incapable of certain epistemic belief, 
truth or knowledge, but, that such biases have unjustly impaired, 
marginalized or circumscribe them from such. The consequence is that, 
we limit the possibility for a wholesome picture of what is possible in a 
knowledge situation. Knowledge situation is understood as the 
“interaction of factors that directly or indirectly contributes to the 
knowing process It concerns the question of the relation of the knower, 
sense data experienced and things known.30 If we must have a 
wholesome knowledge situation, epistemic justice to the knower is 
important. This first helps establish  prima facie ground that he is a viable, 
credible or truth-worthy epistemic agent. If he is denied this quality, not 
on account of any sufficiently grounded incapacity, but, one on the basis 
of implicit or epistemic bias, then, we are poised to have a shaky 
foundation, on whatever is established by the subject of knowledge. 
Biases in epistemic relations, especially of women, raises further the 
challenges to having genuine knowledge or a wholesome knowledge 
situation. 

 
Concluding Remarks: What Can a Woman Know? 
From the discussion above, we have seen that epistemic biases are 
sometimes default thought patterns which skew our judgements in 
favour or against a person, class of persons or situation. The concern of 
feminist epistemology is one that aims to correct this imbalance 
epistemic relation. Persistent gender inequality has affected how the 
subjective component of knowledge affects areas of what can be known 
and unknown. Why this seems to spiral the skeptical challenge, it has also 
left the efforts to gaining purity, balance and wholeness in what we can 
know. Biases are the stumbling blocks to what we can know. As long, we 
pretend that the gender of the knower is unimportant, the female 
knower will continually be disdained by implicit biases, and this will 
continually ferment the grounds of epistemic injustices in epistemic 
relations.  
 The analysis above shows there is a need to improve the dynamics of 
our epistemic practices, one that seeks to eliminate all forms of 
marginalization. If we wish to raise the quality of knowledge production 
and authorization, we must seek to be all inclusive of the composition of 
epistemic communities, one that seeks to give equal grounds for male 
and female knower. Our attention must be properly paid to a robust 
appreciation of the epistemic advantages that can accrue to those who are 
otherwise marginalized. A useful way which has been advanced by 
feminist epistemology is feminist standpoint theory. Feminist standpoint 
theory is a transformative shift that holds three principal claims to 
correcting the epistemological imbalance and impasse occasioned from 



324 Formation of the Human Person in the 21st Century 

biased epistemic relations, namely, “(1) knowledge is socially situated, (2) 
marginalized groups are socially situated in ways that make it more 
possible for them to be aware of things and ask  questions than it is for 
the non-marginalized, and (3) research, particularly that focused on 
power relations, should begin with the lives of the marginalized”.31 
Feminist standpoint theory advocates that the lived experiences of the 
knower, in this case, the woman, cannot be discounted. It also analyses 
the effect of power structures on knowledge production.  The Feminist 
standpoint theory offers new methodological starting point and 
approaches to knowledge situations which generally eliminate such 
forms of epistemic injustices due from a marginalized knower in 
mainstream epistemology. The framework advanced by feminist 
standpoint theory, makes the question, what a woman can know as 
almost superfluous, if it is not asked in the same way, what can a man 
know? This is because, when a woman is given equal chances bereft of 
biases in the epistemic community, a woman can know as much as a 
man, given the same epistemic context. Therefore, feminist standpoint 
theory privileges social contexts and experiences of the knower, precisely, 
female knower.  
 The extant of biased epistemic relations in knowledge communities 
mirrored in the typical anonymous knower of S knows P in mainstream 
epistemology, have helped to reduce the credibility of women as 
knowers. When women are so biased, the starting point is to doubt their 
competence or epistemic credentials. What this means in the first 
instance is that, they are denied rational authority and this is 
epistemologically tied to personhood. When we raise the question, what 
can a woman know, we are entering into the polemic waters of epistemic 
injustice and this can only cause systemic gaps in the interpretive 
resources available to epistemic agents and knowledge gaps in the 
epistemic community. Feminist standpoint theory, therefore, resolves 
this impasse, which is also the position of this paper, for a situatedness of 
knowledge. Situated knowledge which is a feminist thesis, holds that all 
forms of knowledge reflect the particular conditions in which they are 
produced and at some level reflect the social identities and social location 
or gender of knowledge producers. This position deflates the myth of 
scientific objectivity. This position advances that all knowledge must take 
into cognizance the perspective of the knower. The knower is always a 
combination of functions, including idiosyncratic skills and talents. 
Alison Wylie expresses this intent more robustly:  

What individuals experience and understand is 
(contingently) shaped by systems of social differentiation 
that structure and are, in turn, structured by the material 
conditions of their lives, the relations of production and 



Section II: Philosophical Perspectives And Human Formation    325 

reproduction that condition their social interactions, and 
the cultural and conceptual resources available to them for 
representing interpreting these relations.32 

Therefore, to interrogate, what can a woman know, is to begin with a 
prima facie unbiased recognition of the woman as an epistemic agent 
imbue with credibility and rationality; a person whose situation must be 
be cognized, taking her experience in context as well as social conditions 
in perspective. This can only help to enrich the epistemic community, 
granted that all knowers, male and female, are equally appreciated. The 
synopsis of the above submission for our conversation is that to further 
close the gaps caused by skewed epistemic relations from biases, women's 
experiences should be taken into context as well as their experiences. 
Each time we advance the embers of epistemic exclusion of women as 
knowing subjects we further rupture the challenge of scepticism or 
increase the chances of having a wholesome and a more warranted 
knowledge and knowledge production. Apart from the many epistemic 
advantages these have, epistemologically, it restores personhood to the 
woman as a knowing subject, as epistemic injustice and biases 
depersonalizes. 
  
 
Endnotes 
                                                      
1 Aristotle, Metaphysics, Book A (1) in Louis Pojman (Ed), Classics of Philosophy, 

Second edition, (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003), 267. 
2 Lorraine Code, “Is the Sex of the Knower Epistemologically Significant?” in 

Metaphilosophy, vol. 12, No. 3 & 4, July/October 1981, 267- 276. 
3Code, “Is the Sex of the Knower ” 267. 
4 Miranda Fricker, Epistemic Injustice, Power and the Ethics of Knowing, (Oxford: 

Oxford University Press, 2007),  2.  
5 Heidi E. Grasswick, “Introduction: Feminist Epistemology and Philosophy of 

Science in the Twenty-first Century” in Heide E. Grasswick (Ed), Feminist 

Epistemology and Philosophy of Science, Power in Knowledge, (London: Springer, 

2011),  xiv.  
6 Grasswick, “Feminist Epistemology”. 
7 Linda Martin Alcoff and Eva Feder Kittay, “Defining Feminist Philosophy” in  The 

Blackwell Guide to Feminist Philosophy,  Linda Martin Alcoff and Eva Feder Kittay 

(Ed), Malden: Blackwell Publishing Ltd, 2007, 8.  
8 Kristen Campbell, Jacques Lacan and Feminist Epistemology, (London: Routledge 

Taylor and Francis Group publishers, 2004), 59. 
9 Aristotle, Republic. 
10 “Fallacies and Biases” Critical Thinking Web, accessed March 25, 2021, 

https://philosophy.hku.hk/think/fallacy/ 



326 Formation of the Human Person in the 21st Century 

                                                                                                                         
11 Michael Brownstein, “Implicit Bias” in Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 

accessed March 25, 2021,  https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/implicit-bias/. 
12 Jules Holroyd and Kathering Puddifoot, “Epistemic Injustice and Implicit Bias” in 

An Introduction to Implicit Bias Knowledge, Justice and the Social Mind, Erin Beeghly 

and Alex Madva (Eds), New York: Routledge Taylor and Francis Group, 2020),  116-

133. 
13 Emmalon Davis, “On Epistemic Appropriation”, in Ethics, 128 (4), 2018: 702-727. 
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http://dx.doi.org/10.3998/ergo.12405314.0003.022. 
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of Marginality”, Mary Evans, et. al. Eds, The Sage Handbook of Feminist Theory (Los 

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Synthesis, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990. 
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Epistemology” in Social Epistemology: Essential Readings, Alvin Goldman and Denis 

Whitcomb (Eds), Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011. 
21 Fricker, “Rational Authority and Social Power” 56. 
22 Frederick Copleston, A History of Philosophy, Logical Positivism and Existentialism, 

London: Bloomsbury, 1972, 103. 
23 Dermont Moran, “The Phenomenology of Personhood: Charles Taylor and 

Edmund Husserl”, https://www.researchgate.net/publication/266173189_The_Ph 

enomenology_of_Personhood_Charles_Taylor_and_Edmund_Husserl/link/547f73430

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24 Copleston, A History of Philosophy, Logical Positivism and Existentialism, 104.  
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26 Copleston, A History of Philosophy, Logical Positivism and Existentialism, 110. 
27 Copleston, A History of Philosophy, Logical Positivism and Existentialism,112.  
28 Thomas D. Williams and Jan Olof Bengtsson, “Personalism” in Stanford 

Encyclopedia of Philosophy,  https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/personalism/#ChaP 

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29 Williams and Bengtsson, “Personalism”. 
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accessed March 25, 2021, https://iep.utm.edu/fem-stan/ 
32 Alison Wylie, “What Knowers Know Well: Women, Work and Academy” in Heide 

Grasswick (Ed), Feminist Epistemology and Philosophy of Science, New York: 

Springer, 2011, 162. 


