History of (feminist) philosophy

Nancy Fraiser's Fortunes of Feminism might be of interest. It's relatively recent, histroically oriented, but deals with alot of current-day issues as well. It can, however, be a bit rough going.

I'm sorry to be more like a Philosopher here, but the history of any idea (or what Nietzsche would say, its genealogy) conceals its own creation. Anyone can make a timeline, what one need consider is who is invested in such a genealogy, and why would a (quite comprehensive, well-researched list) entirely exclude women, who have been vitally important in the development of contemporary thought? The only person who can connect this ideas is you, if you are interested in Simone de Beavoir or Butler, read them, and see for yourself if they can be connected to these other thinkers, do your own interpretation and your own genealogy. That's exactly what the feminist movements have been doing for their entire existence, not rewriting history, but rereading it. Butler's wheelhouse is psychoanalysis, Beauvoir is existentialism. Yes they are considered feminists, but they are not exclusive to feminism, and their thought draws from all corners; it is diverse and cannot be said to take part of one definite timeline or remain always in one school of thought. There is no one timeline of Philosophy, and no way to rewrite it, you can only make your own.

Feminist philosophy is such a broad category that I can't really provide you a fair outline of its history or all its major thinkers without being super reductive. Check out the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy or Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy for a decent starting point. However, I can provide some advice on how to study feminism and a few names Note that I've mainly studied American and European feminist movements (I can also offer some insights on Latin American and Asian feminist histories, but am less well-acquainted with theorists from these regions).

To start off: authors like de Beauvoir and Butler explicitly state that their works are in part autobiographical/inspired by their lived experiences as women, which is a very different methodology compared to a lot of other philosophical movements. This means that in my opinion, studying feminist philosophy also requires studying the history of feminist activism. Look into the different waves of feminism, particularly topics such as suffrage, family planning and economic equality. I should also note that feminist theory intersects heavily with everything from literature (i.e. Virginia Woolf's famous essay A Room of One's Own, Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale, Charlotte Perkins Gilman's The Yellow Wallpaper or the poetry of Adrienne Rich) to sociology to the history of science (i.e. Freudian concepts of hysteria and the feminist response to mental healthcare); it is exceptionally interdisciplinary.

However, here are some major authors that are almost definitely going to be listed anywhere you look (I'm excluding de Beauvoir and Butler as you already mention them):

Mary Wollstonecraft: Her text A Vindication of the Rights of Women is one of the foundational works in feminism (although the term itself wouldn't be coined until much later, and many of her ideas are very much outdated).

John Stuart Mill & Harriet Taylor Mill: While John Stuart Mill is by far better known today, his wife was hugely influential on his scholarship so I'm giving her equal credit here. His The Subjection of Women applies his utilitarianism to an early version of feminism.

Betty Friedan: The Feminine Mystique was a major influence on American second-wave feminism.

While this list includes many of the generally accepted foundational feminist texts, I should also note that modern feminist theory often challenges the notion of a universal or transnational model of feminism. Butler's observation that gender is in large part constructed by our cultural norms for instance suggests that feminism must be situated within each unique cultural context. While I would argue that there are some relative constants in how women are treated across cultures, I also believe that modern feminist theory requires us to consider intersectionality between womanhood, race, class, nationality, etc. This makes it even more difficult to suggest a list of canonical modern-day feminist texts! However, here are some more recent authors who are widely seen as influential:

bell hooks: She has helped popularize intersectionality in feminist theory (Kimberlé Crenshaw coined the term; check out that paper too).

Nawal El Saadawi: A badass Egyptian feminist and campaigner against FGM, I've only read her famous novel Woman at Point Zero, but her nonfiction is also widely cited.

Finally (yikes this is becoming a long post), here are some modern female philosophers I love and that are hugely influential in their fields. Some of them deal with feminist theory, some don't.

Martha Nussbaum: Just super well-known in a ton of fields, including feminism.

Christine Korsgaard: A Kantian ethicist and Harvard professor.

Hannah Arendt: One of the most famous philosophers of the 20th century, she also wrote on a huge slate of topics, most notably totalitarianism.

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