Tong was born Rosemarie Behensky in Chicago to Joseph J Behensky and Lillian Ann Nedved, both of Czech ancestry. Her paternal grandfather was an immigrant from Nehodiv.
Education
Tong holds a BA in religious studies and German from Marygrove College, an MA in philosophy from Catholic University and a PhD from Temple University. Her MA thesis was on the 19th-century German philosopher Wilhelm Dilthey. She earned her PhD with a dissertation titled “Towards a Rational reconstruction of Anglo-American Criminal Law: The Insanity Defense.”
Career and affiliations
Tong has held professorships at Williams College and Lafayette College. She was the Thatcher Professor in Medical Humanities at Davidson College until 1999, when she began her professorship at the University of North Carolina. She chaired the American Philosophical Association’s Committee on the Status of Women from 2003-2007. From 1999-2002 she was the co-coordinator of the International Network for Feminist Approaches to Bioethics. Tong has also served as chair of the Institutional Review Board’s Conflict of Interest Committee at Chesapeake Research, Inc., co-chair of the North Carolina Institute of Medicine’s Task Force on Pandemic Influenza, and on the boards of the U.S. Women’s Bioethics Project, the North Carolina Biotechnology Center and the Association for Practical and Professional Ethics. Tong has been a consultant to the Advanced Center for Learning Studies, the Fulbright Foundation, the Hastings Center, the National Advisory Board on Ethics and Reproduction, and curricular programs involving medical humanities bioethics and women's studies. She has received grants from the Sloan Foundation, the Ford Foundation, the Fullerton Foundation and the National Endowment for the Humanities. She has written 13 books and more than 100 papers, and was the series editor of the Point/Counterpoint series and the New Feminist Perspectives series from Rowman and Littlefield Press. In Feminist Thought, Tong describes intersectionality and its importance to the globalization of feminism. Tong explains the different sections of feminism that have emerged throughout the years. Tong suggests that intersectionality represents the commitment of women and global feminists, regardless of culture, to "widen the scope of feminist thought." Although global feminism is defined by the sexual issues and gender discrimination of women, its personal twist stems from the political and economic disparities. "Third World" women are far more concerned with the latter disparities separating them from their privileged oppressors. The political agenda of the western world has direct implications on the globalization of the rest of the world, the "non-west."
Personal Life
Her first husband, Dr. Paul Ki King Tong, was a Chinese immigrant and professor at Glassboro State College. The couple bore 2 sons. After Paul died in 1988, she married Jeremiah Putnam. Her son Paul died in 2013.
Partial bibliography
Author
New Perspectives in Healthcare Ethics: An Interdisciplinary and Crosscultural Approach, Westview Press, Mar 3, 2006
Feminist Approaches To Bioethics: Theoretical Reflections And Practical Applications, Westview Press, Dec 27, 1996
Feminine and Feminist Ethics, Westview Press Mar 1, 1993
Feminist Thought: A More Comprehensive Introduction, Westview Press, 1998
