Epistemic Justice and Credibility

Sor Juana's exclusion from intellectual spaces because of her gender exemplifies epistemic injustice—the systematic dismissal of someone's knowledge based on identity rather than evidence. Corruption investigations fail when the testimonies of women, poor communities, and minorities are automatically distrusted. Fighting corruption requires deliberate epistemic justice: actively valuing and protecting witnesses and experts regardless of social position. This means designing investigation processes that hear from lower-level employees, affected communities, and historically silenced groups. Corruption often hides in blind spots created by who we dismiss as credible. Sor Juana's insistence on her intellectual authority despite social barriers teaches that knowledge is knowledge regardless of its source. Anti-corruption work must audit its own biases: whose testimony do we believe? Which voices do we amplify? Building credibility frameworks that transcend social hierarchy is essential to uncovering systematic abuse.