Hypatia: A Journal of Feminist Philosophy is a peer-reviewed academic journal published quarterly by Cambridge University Press. As of July 2025, the journal is led by co-editors Victoria Browne, Katharine Jenkins, Charlotte Knowles, Aidan McGlynn, and Aness Kim Webster. Book reviews are published by Hypatia Reviews Online (HRO). The journal is owned by a non-profit corporation, Hypatia, Inc. The idea for the journal arose out of meetings of the Society for Women in Philosophy (SWIP) in the 1970s. Philosopher and legal scholar Azizah Y. al-Hibri became the founding editor in 1982, when it was published as a "piggy back" issue of the Women's Studies International Forum. In 1984 the Board accepted a proposal by Margaret Simons to launch Hypatia as an autonomous journal, with Simons, who was guest editor of the third (1985) issue of Hypatia at WSIF, as editor. The editorial office at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville handled production as well until Simons, who stepped down as editor in 1990, negotiated a contract with Indiana University Press to publish the journal, facilitating the move to a new editor.

Hypatia became involved in a damaging dispute in 2017 when its associate editors published an unauthorized apology for the journal's publication of an article on transracialism, after the author and article were criticized on social media. The episode pointed to a significant breakdown of communications within Hypatia's editorial team. The journal responded by setting up a task force to restructure its governance. It was the subject of further controversy in 2018 when it accepted a satirical hoax article for publication, one of several written as part of the grievance studies affair. The hoaxes were exposed by The Wall Street Journal before Hypatia was able to publish the article.

Hypatia has its roots in regional meetings of the Society for Women in Philosophy (SWIP), established in 1972. One of SWIP's earliest ideas was that it would set up a philosophy journal. The thought of "a journal of our own" was very powerful, according to Kathryn Morgan (Toronto), speaking in 2009 on the history of Hypatia. At the time, according to Linda Martín Alcoff (CUNY), president of the Hypatia Inc. board of directors since February 2018, philosophers who wanted to write about gender-related issues were being silenced in a discipline "riven by unabashed bias and vested interest, inflicting its own form of unapologetic mob violence".

SWIP decided in 1977 to set up an editorial board to plan the journal; the first board was put together by Ann Garry (Cal State LA) and Jacqueline Thomason (UMass Amherst). At a meeting in Denver in the spring of 1979, the board agreed that Azizah Y. al-Hibri (UR) should be the founding editor. Al-Hibri began work on the journal in 1982, after she had completed her PhD in philosophy and just as she was starting her first year of law school. The philosophy and women's studies departments at the University of Pennsylvania offered support in the form of an office and research assistance. Women's Studies International Forum agreed to publish the new journal as an annual "piggy back" issue of its own, which it did for three years, and distributed 10,000 brochures to its mailing list advertising it.

The group led by Al-Hibri decided that submissions would be fully reviewed and that substantive comments would be offered, rather than the usual brief rejection, to help authors improve their work and to contribute to the field's development. Donna Serniak (Penn) was responsible for the first issue. It was first published independently of Women's Studies International Forum in 1986. In 1984 the Board accepted a proposal by Margaret Simons to launch Hypatia as an autonomous journal, with Simons, who was guest editor of the third (1985) issue of Hypatia at WSIF, as Editor. The editorial office at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville would handle production as well. With the enthusiastic support of SWIP members who voted to include journal subscriptions in their membership dues, contributed papers, and guest edited special issues, the new journal was a success. In 1990 Simons stepped down as Editor, after negotiating a contract with Indiana University Press to handle production and subscription fulfillment, thus allowing the editorial office to move easily to another campus.

The journal is named after Hypatia of Alexandria, a mathematician and philosopher who was murdered by a Christian mob in 415 CE. Al-Hibri said that the SWIP editorial board chose the name to reflect that women have "deep roots in philosophy". According to Linda López McAlister (USF), the idea for the name came from Sue Larson (Barnard) during a meeting of Eastern SWIP in 1973. Sandra Harding (UCLA), who was at the meeting, objected, thinking it awful to name a feminist-philosophy journal after a woman who had been "stoned to death for telling the truth". The first suggestion was Hypatia: A Journal of Philosophy and Feminism, rather than A Journal of Feminist Philosophy, because at the time it was unclear what feminist philosophy might be.

In 2019, Hypatia's editors wrote, in "The Promise of Feminist Philosophy":

The journal's editors have often addressed questions of disciplinary pluralism, demographic exclusion and marginalization, and the journal's own role in setting the agenda for feminist agitation or compliance within the academy. ... The special issue structure has sometimes allowed Hypatia to create space for scholars who are subjected to the most persistent forms of marginalization in the discipline, and for intersectional feminist work, even as Hypatia as a whole has been justly criticized for the underrepresentation of such work. ... More recently, the development of Hypatia clusters (a set of two or more articles on a single theme in an open issue) offers another avenue that might be employed to highlight work that is marginalized in the larger discipline. ... We understand Hypatia to be one of those precarious spaces of resistance, where intentions and outcomes do not perfectly mirror each other. We see Hypatia as aspiring to a critical practice that must be vigilantly maintained even as it remains open to radical transformation, as new historical and material conditions present themselves.