Event Title
The moral imperative for social science research to amend the underrepresentation of women in philosophy
Start Date
26-6-2010 1:00 PM
End Date
26-6-2010 2:30 PM
Description
This presentation is part of the Women in Science and Philosophy: Empirical Investigations and Their Use track.
The percentage of women in philosophy in the U.S. currently stands at around 21%, with the percentage of women at the very top universities being significantly lower.1 This rate of participation in philosophy by women marks the discipline out as an exception to the gender equity achieved across the other humanities disciplines.
On August 11-13, 2009, a group composed of 21 women philosophers from universities across the United States, as well as Canada and the UK, met for the purpose of addressing the practices in philosophy that contribute to the continuing underrepresentation of women in philosophy. We propose that three of our members present a co-authored report to the International Association of Women Philosophers, outlining our reasons for forming a Women in Philosophy Task Force, our mission “to coordinate initiatives and intensify efforts to advance women in philosophy,” and our argument for the necessity of empirical evidence and engaged social science as indispensible in correcting the gender imbalances and gender biases which persist in our profession, yet which are obscured by the lack of good data in the U.S.
We take the successes of the Australasian Association of Philosophy as indicative of what can be accomplished when data are collected regularly and systematically. Their own report, Improving the Participation of Women in the Philosophy Profession, says, “The AAP has collected data for a number of years on staffing, student enrolments, and publication outputs of Australasian philosophy departments (schools or programs). It has become clear that the proportion of women employed in continuing positions and the proportion of women [in senior positions] remains low.”2 Such data collection better motivates all members of the profession to recognize disproportions in women’s participation in the discipline, and disparities including those found in hiring and promotion practices, and publication of works authored by women. In the absence of good empirical information, speculations that women are simply uninterested in employment, promotion or publication amount to misrecognition of the barriers that women currently face in philosophy.
We believe that better data would contribute to the well-being of future women in philosophy as well. As Rhea Steinpreis, Katie Anders and Dawn Ritzke established ten years ago, “other researchers have pointed out that the few women who have reached high levels in the business world are an essential population to study because they can provide critical information for future generations of women coming up in the field.”3
We focus our efforts on three pressing areas of concern. First, we attend to the necessity for fuller information on women’s employment in senior positions in academic institutions; we consider the obstacles to achieving Australia’s enviable 100% response rate on institutional data and methods of overcoming such obstacles. Second, we consider recent work in social science which reinforces the necessity of what philosophers call moral deference and recognition respect; we focus on the extent to which moral equality can be affirmed by resisting moral subordination.4 Third, we address the partial information currently available on the publication of women’s works in philosophical journals, and offer arguments for tiered and anonymous review processes to attenuate unintentional bias in publication practices.
We conclude that the misrecognition of women in philosophy is indeed a fundamentally moral problem. We point to evidence that recognition is achievable and women’s participation in philosophy can be improved. We suggest that in light of the arguments for the necessity of better data to alleviate harmful situations, it is incumbent upon philosophers to work with social scientists to advance the well-being of women in philosophy and the future of the profession.
The moral imperative for social science research to amend the underrepresentation of women in philosophy
This presentation is part of the Women in Science and Philosophy: Empirical Investigations and Their Use track.
The percentage of women in philosophy in the U.S. currently stands at around 21%, with the percentage of women at the very top universities being significantly lower.1 This rate of participation in philosophy by women marks the discipline out as an exception to the gender equity achieved across the other humanities disciplines.
On August 11-13, 2009, a group composed of 21 women philosophers from universities across the United States, as well as Canada and the UK, met for the purpose of addressing the practices in philosophy that contribute to the continuing underrepresentation of women in philosophy. We propose that three of our members present a co-authored report to the International Association of Women Philosophers, outlining our reasons for forming a Women in Philosophy Task Force, our mission “to coordinate initiatives and intensify efforts to advance women in philosophy,” and our argument for the necessity of empirical evidence and engaged social science as indispensible in correcting the gender imbalances and gender biases which persist in our profession, yet which are obscured by the lack of good data in the U.S.
We take the successes of the Australasian Association of Philosophy as indicative of what can be accomplished when data are collected regularly and systematically. Their own report, Improving the Participation of Women in the Philosophy Profession, says, “The AAP has collected data for a number of years on staffing, student enrolments, and publication outputs of Australasian philosophy departments (schools or programs). It has become clear that the proportion of women employed in continuing positions and the proportion of women [in senior positions] remains low.”2 Such data collection better motivates all members of the profession to recognize disproportions in women’s participation in the discipline, and disparities including those found in hiring and promotion practices, and publication of works authored by women. In the absence of good empirical information, speculations that women are simply uninterested in employment, promotion or publication amount to misrecognition of the barriers that women currently face in philosophy.
We believe that better data would contribute to the well-being of future women in philosophy as well. As Rhea Steinpreis, Katie Anders and Dawn Ritzke established ten years ago, “other researchers have pointed out that the few women who have reached high levels in the business world are an essential population to study because they can provide critical information for future generations of women coming up in the field.”3
We focus our efforts on three pressing areas of concern. First, we attend to the necessity for fuller information on women’s employment in senior positions in academic institutions; we consider the obstacles to achieving Australia’s enviable 100% response rate on institutional data and methods of overcoming such obstacles. Second, we consider recent work in social science which reinforces the necessity of what philosophers call moral deference and recognition respect; we focus on the extent to which moral equality can be affirmed by resisting moral subordination.4 Third, we address the partial information currently available on the publication of women’s works in philosophical journals, and offer arguments for tiered and anonymous review processes to attenuate unintentional bias in publication practices.
We conclude that the misrecognition of women in philosophy is indeed a fundamentally moral problem. We point to evidence that recognition is achievable and women’s participation in philosophy can be improved. We suggest that in light of the arguments for the necessity of better data to alleviate harmful situations, it is incumbent upon philosophers to work with social scientists to advance the well-being of women in philosophy and the future of the profession.