Epistemic Justice: The Right to Be Believed

When Sor Juana spoke on theology, philosophy, or mathematics, her ideas were discounted not because they were wrong but because they came from a woman. This represents epistemic injustice: the denial of credibility to knowers based on social prejudice. She had to prove her learning more thoroughly than her male counterparts, fight for her ideas to be taken seriously, and watch as men received credit for work women had pioneered. This reveals a core dimension of fairness: the right to be believed, to have your knowledge counted, to be recognized as a legitimate knower. Every civilization that achieved justice protected this right—valuing testimony from all people, including women, enslaved persons, and the poor. Applied to fairness today, this means examining whose expertise we dismiss, recognizing how bias affects credibility judgments, valuing experiential knowledge alongside formal credentials, and ensuring that marginalized communities' understanding of their own problems is treated as authoritative. Sor Juana teaches that injustice includes being systematically disbelieved, and fairness requires that all people have their knowledge claims taken seriously.