This chapter has two aims. First, I distinguish between two forms of testimonial injustice: identity-based testimonial injustice and content-based testimonial injustice. Second, I utilize this distinction to develop a partial explanation for the persistent lack of diverse practitioners in academic philosophy. Specifically, I argue that both identity-based and content-based testimonial injustice are prevalent in philosophical discourse and that this prevalence introduces barriers to participation for those targeted. As I show, the dual and compounding effects of identity-based and content-based testimonial injustice (...) in philosophy plausibly contribute to a lack of diversity in the social identities of practitioners and the discourses in which practitioners are engaged. (shrink)

This paper presents data on the representation of women at 98 philosophy departments in the United States, which were ranked by the Philosophical Gourmet Report (PGR) in 2015 as well as all of those schools on which data from 2004 exist. The paper makes four points in providing an overview of the state of the field. First, all programs reveal a statistically significant increase in the percentage of women tenured/tenure-track faculty, since 2004. Second, out of the 98 US philosophy departments (...) selected for evaluation by Julie Van Camp in 2004, none in 2015 has 50% women philosophy faculty overall, while one has 50% women who are tenured/tenure track. Third, as of 2015, there is a clear pyramidal shape to the discipline: Women are better represented as Assistant than Associate and as Associate than Full professors. Fourth, women philosophy faculty, especially those who are tenured/tenure track, are better represented at Non-PGR ranked programs than at PGR ranked and PGR Top-20 programs in 2015. (shrink)

This paper is part of a larger project designed to examine and ameliorate the underrepresentation of female-identified students in the philosophy department at Elon University. The larger project involved a variety of research methods, including statistical analysis of extant registration and grade distribution data from our department as well as the administration of multiple surveys. Here, we provide a description and analysis of one aspect of our research: focus groups. We ran three focus groups of female-identified undergraduate students: one group (...) consisted of students who had taken more than one philosophy class, one consisted of students who had taken only one philosophy class, and one consisted of students who had taken no philosophy classes. After analyzing the results of the focus groups, we find evidence that: one philosophy class alone did not cultivate a growth mindset among female-identified students of philosophy, professors have the potential to ameliorate students’ perceptions of philosophy; and students who have not taken philosophy are likely to see their manner of thinking as being at odds with that required by philosophy. We conclude by articulating a series of questions worthy of further study. (shrink)

In this short essay, I report results from a representative national dataset from the Cooperative Institutional Research Program that shows that significantly more men than women intend to major in philosophy at the high-school and pre-university level. This lends credence to pre-university effects hypotheses of women's underrepresentation in philosophy and successfully replicates a smaller analysis performed by Cheshire Calhoun at Colby College in 2009. I also defend my analysis against an objection that claims that intention to major is not a (...) good predictor of final major selection. Finally, I argue that this new analysis should lead to further investment in university-level diversity programs. (shrink)

Six hundred three people completed a survey measuring perceptions of traditional areas of philosophical inquiry and their relationship to empirical science. The ten areas studied were: aesthetics, epistemology, ethics, history of philosophy, logic, metaphysics, philosophy of language, philosophy of mind, philosophy of science, and political philosophy. For each area, participants rated whether it is currently central to philosophy, whether its centrality depends on integration with science, and whether work in the area is sufficiently integrated with science. Centrality judgments tended to (...) be high. Participants viewed nine of the ten areas as central to philosophy, although they made this judgment more confidently for some areas. Dependence judgments were more varied, ranging from clear disagreement to clear agreement. Integration judgments were also varied but exhibited more uncertainty. Some areas whose centrality depended on integration were judged to be well integrated, but a central tendency for all other areas was ambivalence. Demographic factors had small but statistically significant effects on all three sorts of judgment. Higher age predicted higher centrality judgments and higher integration judgments. Higher socioeconomic status predicted lower dependence judgments and higher integration judgments. Men recorded higher integration judgments. (shrink)

At first glance it might appear that experimental philosophers and feminist philosophers would make good allies. Nonetheless, experimental philosophy has received criticism from feminist fronts, both for its methodology and for some of its guiding assumptions. Adding to this critical literature, I raise questions concerning the ways in which “differences” in intuitions are employed in experimental philosophy. Specifically, I distinguish between two ways in which differences in intuitions might play a role in philosophical practice, one which puts an end to (...) philosophical conversation and the other which provides impetus for beginning one. Insofar as experimental philosophers are engaged in deploying “differences” in intuitions in the former rather than the latter sense, I argue that their approach is antithetical to feminist projects. Moreover, this is even the case when experimental philosophers deploy “differences” in intuitions along lines of gender. (shrink)

Why is there female under-representation among philosophy majors? We survey the hypotheses that have been proposed so far, grouping similar hypotheses together. We then propose a chronological taxonomy that distinguishes hypotheses according to the stage in undergraduates’ careers at which the hypotheses predict an increase in female under-representation. We then survey the empirical evidence for and against various hypotheses. We end by suggesting future avenues for research.

Recent work on women’s underrepresentation in philosophy has focused on a distinction between “in class” and “pre-university” effects as the primary cause of women’s underrepresentation in philosophy. This paper reports from a large dataset (n > 2,000,000) from the Cooperative Institutional Research Program that shows that, of the American students that intended to major in philosophy before they started college, about two-thirds are men. This lends credence to the pre-university effects explanation for women’s underrepresentation in philosophy. This paper will discuss (...) this finding in light of Louise Antony’s “perfect storm” theory of women’s underrepresentation in philosophy. I will argue that a major part of the perfect storm for women in philosophy is a masculine philosopher schema that discourages women from continuing in philosophy even before they enter a college philosophy class. I will also consider two objections to this argument, what I call the “problem of ignorance” and the “transmission problem.”. (shrink)

The anglophone philosophy profession has a well-known problem with gender equity. A sig-nificant aspect of the problem is the fact that there are simply so many more male philoso-phers than female philosophers among students and faculty alike. The problem is at its stark-est at the faculty level, where only 22% - 24% of philosophers are female in the United States (Van Camp 2014), the United Kingdom (Beebee & Saul 2011) and Australia (Goddard 2008).<1> While this is a result of the (...) percentage of women declining at each point through-out the standard career trajectory, recent large-scale studies in the United States (Paxton et al. 2012) and Australia (Goddard et al. 2008) have identified a key drop-off point as the transi-tion between taking introductory classes and majoring in philosophy. So why do dispropor-tionately few female students choose to major in philosophy? (shrink)

According to Stereotype Threat Hypothesis, fear of confirming gendered stereotypes causes women to experience anxiety in circumstances wherein their performance might potentially confirm those stereotypes, such as high-stakes testing scenarios in science, technology, engineering, and math courses. This anxiety causes women to underperform, which in turn causes them to withdraw from math-intensive disciplines. STH is thought by many to account for the underrepresentation of women in STEM fields, and a growing body of evidence substantiates this hypothesis. In considering the plausibility (...) of STH as an explanation for women's disproportionate attrition from undergraduate philosophy programs, one is struck by dissimilarities between STEM and philosophy that appear to undermine the applicability of STH to the latter. In this paper, I argue that these dissimilarities are either merely apparent or merely apparently relevant to the plausibility of STH as an explanation for gender disparities in philosophy. I argue further that, if research from STEM uncovers promising strategies for confronting stereotype threat, we should think about how to apply those strategies in our introductory philosophy classrooms. (shrink)

This paper summarizes recent and ongoing experimental work regarding the reality, nature, effects, and causes of the underrepresentation of women in academic philosophy. We first present empirical data on several aspects of underrepresentation, and then consider various reasons why this gender imbalance is problematic. We then turn to the published and preliminary results of empirical work aimed at identifying factors that might explain it.

In this chapter, I bring insights from the social sciences, about the role of time in exclusionary practices, into debates around the under-representation of women in philosophy. I will suggest that part of what supports the exclusionary culture of philosophy is a particular approach to time, and thus that changing this culture requires that we also change its time.

The lack of gender parity in philosophy has garnered serious attention recently. Previous empirical work that aims to quantify what has come to be called “the gender gap” in philosophy focuses mainly on the absence of women in philosophy faculty and graduate programs. Our study looks at gender representation in philosophy among undergraduate students, undergraduate majors, graduate students, and faculty. Our findings are consistent with what other studies have found about women faculty in philosophy, but we were able to add (...) two pieces of new information. First, the biggest drop in the proportion of women in philosophy occurs between students enrolled in introductory philosophy classes and philosophy majors. Second, this drop is mitigated by the presence of more women philosophy faculty. (shrink)

Philosophy has the dubious distinction of attracting and retaining proportionally fewer women than any other field in the humanities, indeed, fewer than in all but the most resolutely male-dominated of the sciences. This short article introduces a thematic cluster that brings together five short essays that probe the reasons for and the effects of these patterns of exclusion, not just of women but of diverse peoples of all kinds in Philosophy. It summarizes some of the demographic measures of exclusion that (...) are cause for concern and identifies key themes that cross-cut these discussions: gender stereotypes and climate issues, ‘cognitive distortions’ and disciplinary norms. (shrink)

On average, women make up half of introductory-level philosophy courses, but only one-third of upper-division courses. We contribute to the growing literature on this problem by reporting the striking results of our study at the University of Oklahoma. We found that two attitudes are especially strong predictors of whether women are likely to continue in philosophy: feeling similar to the kinds of people who become philosophers, and enjoying philosophical puzzles and issues. In a regression analysis, they account for 63% of (...) variance. Importantly, women are significantly less likely to hold these attitudes than men. Thus, instructors who care about improving the retention of women undergraduates should find ways to improve these attitudes – for instance, by demonstrating the ways in which professional philosophers are like them. We will discuss some tentative but intuitively plausible suggestions for interventions, though further research is required to establish the effectiveness of those interventions. (shrink)

In this article, I explore a new reason in favor of precollegiate philosophy: It could help narrow the persistent gender disparity within the discipline. I catalog some of the most widely endorsed explanations for the underrepresentation of women in philosophy and argue that, on each hypothesized explanation, precollegiate philosophy instruction could help improve our discipline's gender balance. Explanations I consider include stereotype threat, gendered philosophical intuitions, inhospitable disciplinary environment, lack of same-sex role models for women students in philosophy, and conflicting (...) “schemas” for philosophy and femininity. I argue that, insofar as some combination of these hypothesized explanations accounts for some portion of the underrepresentation of women in philosophy, those of us concerned to make things better have reason to participate in and promote efforts to share philosophy with younger students. (shrink)

This study tests the hypothesis that the perception of philosophy as a male-oriented discipline contributes to the pronounced gender disparity within the field. To assess the hypothesis, we determined the extent to which individuals view philosophy as masculine, and whether individual differences in this correspond with greater identification with philosophy. We also tested whether identification with philosophy correlated to interest in it. We discovered, first, that the more women view philosophy as masculine, the less they identify with it, and second, (...) that the less women identify with philosophy, the less they want to major in it. Interestingly, this result does not hold for men—their viewing philosophy as masculine does not correspond to their identification with it, nor does it correlate with their likelihood of majoring in it. We also discovered that the typical student does not have a preconceived notion of philosophy as masculine; this suggests that they come to view philosophy as masculine the more they do it, which in turn supports the possibility that teaching the discipline differently may prevent students from conceiving of philosophy as masculine, thus allowing a path to reducing the gender disparity. (shrink)

In this paper I examine some research on how to diminish or eliminate stereotype threat in mathematics. Some of the successful strategies include: informing our students about stereotype threat, challenging the idea that logical intelligence is an “innate” ability, making students In threatened groups feel welcomed, and introducing counter-stereotypical role models. The purpose of this paper is to take these strategies that have proven successful and come up with specific ways to incorporate them into introductory logic classes. For example, the (...) possible benefit of presenting logic to our undergraduate students by concentrating on aspects of logic that do not result in a clash of schemas. (shrink)

Dans les discussions concernant la sous-représentation des femmes dans le domaine de la philosophie professionnelle, ceux et celles qui sont sceptiques quant à l’explication par la discrimination suggèrent souvent que les différences de genre dans les intérêts constituent une autre hypothèse possible. Certain.e.s croient que si les intérêts différents des femmes expliquaient la sous-représentation, les interventions suggérées par l’hypothèse de la discrimination ne seraient pas nécessaires, voire seraient risquées. Je maintiens qu’on doit considérer la façon dont les stéréotypes exerceraient une (...) influence sur les intérêts, et que ce faisant, on peut offrir une évaluation plus équilibrée des risques découlant des interventions proposées. (shrink)

The authors adopt a critico-sociological methodology to investigate the current state of the philosophical profession. According to them, the question concerning the status of philosophy cannot be answered from within the precinct of philosophical reason alone, since philosophy—understood primarily as a profession—is marked by a constitutive type of self-ignorance that prevents it from reflecting upon its own sociological conditions of actuality. This ignorance, which is both cause and effect of the organization and investment of philosophical desire, causes philosophers to lose (...) themselves in an ideological myth ”) according to which philosophers are unaffected by the material conditions in which they exist. This myth prevents philosophers from noticing the extent to which their activity is influenced by extra-philosophical determinants that shape, empirically, who becomes a professional philosopher and who doesn't. This article explores the relationship between philosophy's “idea” and its “imago” as a way of shedding light on some of the mechanisms that make philosophy inhospitable for so many women, people of color, and economic minorities. (shrink)

This paper presents new data on the representation of women who publish in 25 top philosophy journals as ranked by the Philosophical Gourmet Report for the years 2004, 2014, and 2015. It also provides a new analysis of Schwitzgebel’s 1955–2015 journal data. The paper makes four points while providing an overview of the current state of women authors in philosophy. In all years and for all journals, the percentage of female authors was extremely low, in the range of 14–16%. The (...) percentage of women authors is less than the percentage of women faculty in different ranks and at different kinds of institutions. In addition, there is great variation across individual journals, and the discrepancy between women authors and women faculty appears to be different in different subfields. Interestingly, journals which do not practice anonymous review seem to have a higher percentage of women authors than journals which practice double anonymous or triple anonymous review. This paper also argues that we need more data on academic publishing to better understand whether this can explain why there are so few full-time female faculty in philosophy, since full-time hiring and tenuring practices presumably depend on a candidate’s academic publishing. (shrink)

In introducing the present issue, I clarify in which sense knowledge and philosophy can discriminate and marginalize some individuals. In the first part, I focus on the traditional exclusion of women from philosophy and explore some feminist projects of re-reading the philosophical canon. In my analysis, I pay particular attention to the gender gap in philosophy and the so-called “demographic problem” in academia. In the second part, I examine the best practices for remedying these forms of injustice and promoting diversity (...) in philosophy. (shrink)

Although recent empirical research suggests that there is a gender gap in Anglophone philosophy, no research has been done on the representation of women in non‐Anglophone philosophy. The present study constitutes a first step toward filling this void in the literature by providing empirical evidence on the representation of female students and female faculty members in Greek universities' departments of philosophy. Our findings indicate that the underrepresentation of female students in philosophy is not a universal phenomenon, since female students constitute (...) the majority of philosophy students in Greece at both the undergraduate and the graduate levels. However, our findings also suggest that the low number of women in philosophy at the faculty level is not a problem unique to Anglophone philosophy, since female faculty members comprise, on average, only 29% of philosophy faculty members in Greece. In order to explain these findings, we argue, first, that the teaching of philosophy at the secondary level may motivate female students in Greece to enter and persist in philosophy, and, second, that since the gender gap at the faculty level in Greece cannot be attributed to the low number of female students in the philosophy pipeline, the causes of women's poor participation in philosophy at the faculty level should be looked for elsewhere. (shrink)

In this short essay, I report results from a representative national dataset from the Cooperative Institutional Research Program that shows that significantly more men than women intend to major in philosophy at the high‐school and pre‐university level. This lends credence to pre‐university effects hypotheses of women's underrepresentation in philosophy and successfully replicates a smaller analysis performed by Cheshire Calhoun at Colby College in 2009. I also defend my analysis against an objection that claims that intention to major is not a (...) good predictor of final major selection. Finally, I argue that this new analysis should lead to further investment in university‐level diversity programs. (shrink)

This essay contributes to the explanatory hypotheses for why women persistently make up a third or fewer of all undergraduate philosophy majors in the United States. Following a suggestion of Tom Dougherty, Samuel Baron, and Kristie Miller, the essay first examines what women undergraduates do major in, why they might prefer these subjects to philosophy, and how departments might make philosophy more attractive. Second, the essay explores the relevance to philosophy of Sapna Cheryan’s work on the connection between women’s disinterest (...) in majoring in computer science and their feelings of dissimilarity to the stereotype of the computer science major. (shrink)

Se plantea que los currículos universitarios actuales de filosofía se soportan en estructuras curriculares que conllevarían diversas modalidades de injusticias epistémicas, a saber: el anglo-eurocentrismo, el racismo, el sexismo y el humanismo. Con base en esta premisa, la cual se considera inscrita en la trayectoria histórica de los epistemicidios occidentales, se propone la necesidad de decolonización del currículo universitario de filosofía en las universidades colombianas. Se plantea como un proyecto urgente de acción educativa que, de modo inmediato, contribuiría a contrarrestar (...) las diversas modalidades de injusticias epistémicas y, transitivamente, impulsaría la materialización de lo que aquí se denomina justicia curricular. Esto no solo sería provechoso para mejorar y transformar los currículos de filosofía en el nivel de educación superior y el paulatino enriquecimiento epistemológico de la filosofía, sino que también aportaría a un reconocimiento saludable de la pluridiversidad en la universidad. (shrink)