Throughout her undergraduate years at Morehead State University, Dr. Lenore Wright repeatedly found herself asking one question: “Where are the women?” She was the only female philosophy major, had no female philosophy professors, and read works almost exclusively by male philosophers.
“It was just me and the guys, all the time, in every class, and they were great,” Wright said. “There was nothing negative, per se, about the experience, but I did find it very isolating, being the only woman and realizing the way in which the men engage each other in conversation, in dialogue, and debate.”
For generations, women have been the minority in philosophy. A 2018 membership survey by the American Philosophical Association found that just over one-quarter of its members were women.
“I was trying to imagine for myself, can I just live this life in my head? I thought the only option was just to do it like the men do it,” Wright said.
After being encouraged by her mentors at Morehead to pursue her master’s degree, Wright headed to Baylor, where she met Dr. Anne-Marie Schultz who was a philosophy professor at the University and Wright’s first model of what a woman in philosophy looks like in practice.
“It was a profound difference just to be able to be with a woman philosopher who had already navigated that path and understood,” Wright said. “She provided that very important model for me.”
Schultz, like Wright, had been the only woman in the room for most of her philosophy education. She said when she started her education she was too young and naive to consider the imbalance an issue, simply accepting it as part of the discipline’s nature.
As she progressed through graduate school and into her career, however, she began to see that imbalance not as an inevitability, but as an opportunity for the discipline to grow.
“When you’re in the minority voice in a room, it is hard to get the fact that you have something intelligent to say noticed enough to get it off the ground,” Schultz said.
It’s important for dreamers to have role models to look up to, something Schultz, now a Master Teacher, wishes she had as she paved her way in the field of philosophy. As an English and Philosophy major, she knew of brilliant female authors, but hadn’t been exposed to the female philosophers like Iris Murdoch and Philippa Foot who were active in the field at the time.
“For whatever reason, their story didn’t get presented to me,” Schultz said. “I think that could have been very, very impactful to me if I had known about their existence when I was younger.”
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Schultz’s first impression of Wright was of a young woman with a love of learning and enthusiasm for life. For Wright, Schultz as a professor introduced a new sphere of philosophical thought and teaching, one that was both encouraging and terrifying.
“She’s not physically intimidating — she’s a petite person — but intellectually we were all so intimidated right off the bat just at her depth of knowledge,” Wright said.
Wright remembers Schultz sitting at the table with the other graduate students, propping her knees up against the counter rather than lecturing from the front of the room. Instead of treating philosophy as a discipline confined to rows of students analyzing texts, Schultz fostered an environment where students were encouraged to pursue unconventional ideas and challenge established ways of thinking.
“She encouraged me, really for the first time, that maybe there’s space in the classroom and within the field of philosophy for us to reshape those norms and create new norms,” Wright said.
Wright left Baylor to pursue her doctoral studies and returned in 1998 to serve as the assistant director of the Baylor Interdisciplinary Core. Once she returned to Waco, she reached out to Schultz and the two began forming a friendship.
Schultz took Wright under her wing, especially after Wright began her tenure-track position in 2003, guiding her through the challenges Schultz had already navigated herself. She invited Wright to conferences, shared articles she thought would interest her, and offered encouragement throughout the tenure process.
Over time, that mentorship evolved into a friendship rooted in mutual support. Whether celebrating accomplishments or navigating professional and personal challenges, the two have remained one another’s sounding board.
“I think we’re all lucky in life if we can find people who see us clearly for who we are, as who we are, and who we are trying to become and help us on that path in a really selfless way,” Wright said. “She’s one of those people. I’m lucky to have a fellow philosopher.”
More than two decades later, Schultz continues to send Wright book reviews, journal articles, and conference recommendations. Whenever one of them encounters writer’s block, the other is there to send the muses her way.
Recently the duo had the opportunity to teach their first course together, PHI 5350: Graduate Seminar on Teaching Philosophy, a workshop Schultz had taught for at least a decade prior to bringing Wright on.
“I got this wonderful opportunity to look in at how [the students] see her and experience her,” Wright said. “There’s nothing more gratifying than seeing your friend respected and loved by students.”
For Schultz and Wright, their friendship extends far beyond their own careers. Together, they hope it signals something larger, that philosophy is no longer a discipline where women have to wonder whether they belong.
“I think [friendships like ours] signify that even when spaces are designed to exclude, they’re never closed,” Wright said. “You can engage in refining, revising, whatever figurative space you find yourself in. Once you’re able to do that, we both feel very strongly, we want others to go behind us.”
The field of philosophy is still dominated by men, but the pair hopes to be a representation for young female philosophers at Baylor that they too can excel in the field of philosophy. Schultz saw a familiar scene in one of her philosophy classes this spring: a single female student in a room full of men.
“It was a little depressing that all these years later, there’s still only one, but she got through it,” Schultz said. “I can’t help but believe that some part of her openness to continue on this path has to do with her seeing concrete examples of other women doing it.”
Decades after Wright wondered to herself, “Where are the women?” she and Schultz have become part of the answer.
