This post is by Annalisa Coliva, Chancellor of Philosophy at the University of California, Irvine, and editor-in-chief of the Journal for the History of Analytic Philosophy.
What does it mean to be a woman? Philosophers, feminists, and activists have debated this for decades, often clashing over whether “woman” should be defined biologically, socially, or politically. In recent work (Coliva 2024), I have argued that we should instead think of woman as a family resemblance concept—a flexible, open-ended framework that avoids the pitfalls of rigid definitions and better accounts for inclusivity, particularly for trans women.
A family resemblance account rejects the idea that woman must be tied to strict, necessary, and sufficient conditions. Instead, it allows for overlapping similarities and “intermediate links.” Just as Wittgenstein described the concept of game—where tennis, solitaire, and playing with dolls share different but overlapping traits— woman can include diverse cases without requiring all members to share defining features. This flexibility means that trans women, for instance, are included without replacing the concept entirely.
My approach thus rejects both natural essences (biology as destiny) and social essences (fixed roles). Instead, it emphasizes that meaning depends on use and can evolve with changing practices. The concept woman is not static but dynamic—more like a living organism than a rigid definition. Its open-endedness allows us to extend it without replacement, preserving continuity while fostering inclusivity.
Miranda Fricker (2007) has shown that a lack of shared conceptual resources may lead to “hermeneutical injustice”—that is, the impossibility of making sense of the lived experiences of people in marginalized groups. In more recent work (Coliva 2025), I have argued that hermeneutical injustice can also arise when faulty conceptual resources are sustained by power structures that benefit from keeping them in place. On this view, it might seem that hermeneutical justice could be achieved simply by allowing for a more inclusive concept woman.
However, true justice—what I call full hermeneutical justice—requires addressing not just the concept but also the prototypes and stereotypes attached to woman. Concepts, prototypes, and stereotypes interact but play different roles in human cognition. Concepts are normative: they tell us when something belongs to a category. Prototypes are typical examples that shape cognitive ease, like robins for birds or cows for mammals. Stereotypes, by contrast, are socially shared generalizations that can be oversimplified or harmful—for instance, assuming that women are naturally nurturing or that leadership is inherently male.
The difficulty is that prototypes and stereotypes operate quickly and unconsciously. A woman who deviates from them—for example, a trans woman or a cis woman who does not conform to norms of appearance or motherhood—may be misrecognized or excluded.
This is why extending the concept woman is not enough. Prototypes and stereotypes must also shift if inclusion is to be lived and recognized. Here, activism plays a crucial role. Campaigns that feature trans women on magazine covers or highlight women in leadership positions help “queer the centre” (Scheman 1996), broadening the range of what counts as typical. Inclusive language reforms in gendered languages like Italian similarly chip away at stereotypes by breaking the link between masculinity and authority. Over time, such efforts help reshape not just our concepts but also our collective imagination, thus fostering full hermeneutical justice.