gender
TagThat Philosophy Is A “Cushy Gig” Explains Some Of The Profession’s Problems
Philosophy is largely male, white, cis, straight, able-bodied—why? Well, maybe it has little or nothing to do with philosophy.
That appears to be the view of philosopher Albert Atkin (Macquarie), in response to Richard Marshall when he raises the topic of diversity in philosophy in an interview at 3:AM Magazine. (more…)
Philosophy Departments and Journals Ranked by Gender Data at New Website
A new website presents data on women in philosophy in a novel manner: it orders departments by number of women faculty and journals by number of women authors. (more…)
Data on Diversity in (mostly) US Philosophy
The American Philosophical Association (APA) has released a new report on its membership demographics over the past three years. Has philosophy become more demographically diverse during this period? It’s not easy to tell from the data.
Gender & The Philosophy Job Market
“The odds of women obtaining a permanent academic placement within two years is 65% greater than men when all else is held constant,” according to an analysis discussed by Carolyn Dicey Jennings, Patrice Cobb, and David Vinson (UC Merced) at the Blog of the APA.
Jennings and Vinson do not argue for any particular explanation of this finding, but note three possibil..
Philosophy Degrees: How Many Are Awarded, And To Whom?
Humanities Indicators, a project of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, has released new degree-specific data on various humanities subjects, including philosophy. Here are some of the findings. All data and images below are from the Humanities Indicators site. (more…)
Philosophy Placement Data and Analysis: An Update (guest post by Carolyn Dicey Jennings)
The following is a guest post* by Carolyn Dicey Jennings (UC Merced), who has led a team of academics in producing and organizing a trove of data related to the graduation and placement records of English-language philosophy Ph.D. programs (previously). The team just published an update to its 2015 report, “Academic Placement Data and Analysis” (APDA). Among other ..
Penn State’s Efforts at Diversifying Philosophy
Five black women earned Ph.D.s in philosophy from Penn State this year, according to an article at The Chronicle of Higher Education (currently paywalled) that looks at the efforts the philosophy department there has been making to diversify philosophy.
The Chronicle reports that:
According to the latest federal data, of the 370 American citizens and permanent..
Demographic Data on U.S. Philosophy Faculty
Trends show a slow decrease in the extent to which U.S. full-time philosophy faculty at four-year institutions is male and white, according to data obtained from the National Center for Education Statistics by Eric Schwitzgebel (UC Riverside) and posted at The Splintered Mind:
Gender data:
1988: philosophy*: 91% male (vs. 75% for all fields).
1993: philosophy..
Bias, Subjectivity, and Superficiality in Philosophy
The philosophy profession in the United States is overwhelmingly male and white. What explains this? In an essay in The Los Angeles Times, Myisha Cherry (UI Chicago) and Eric Schwitzgebel (UC Riverside) offer an explanation:
One of the main causes of homogeneity in philosophy, we believe, is subjectivity and bias in the evaluation of philosophical quality.
They ..
Philosophy Job Placement Data Update
Carolyn Dicey Jennings (UC Merced) posts that the final report for the Academic Placement Data and Analysis project is complete. She’ll eventually be posting more about it, but I repost some of the information from the report below. One thing worth noting is that though 169 programs were contacted, only 87 added or updated information to the project database. If you..
Philosophy of Sex and Gender Course Suggestions
Jessica Wolfendale (West Virginia) writes in:
I am putting together a course proposal for an introductory Philosophy of Sex & Gender course, and I would appreciate any suggestions regarding how best to structure the course and what content to include, as well as advice about what did/didn’t work in similar courses.
Readers?
Goswami Lawsuit Against DePaul to Proceed
Namita Goswami was denied tenure in the Department of Philosophy at DePaul University in the 2009-2010 academic year. She claimed that discrimination played a role in the decision and sued. Her story was covered a few years back in Inside Higher Ed:
“I was teaching exactly what I was hired to do and it was used against me,” said Goswami, a native of India who all..
Using Initials to Hide Gender
There is some evidence that women scientists use their first initials, rather than their first names, at a greater frequency than men do in their publications. It would not be surprising if this were also true in philosophy and some other non-science disciplines. Reasons for women using initials might include worries about sexism in non-fully-anonymized peer review,..
“Philosophy is for posh, white boys with trust funds”
Seven philosophers are interviewed in The Guardian in the wake of a recent report by the UK’s Equality Challenge Unit that found that “among non-Stem (science, technology, engineering and maths) subjects, philosophy is one of the most male-dominated, with men accounting for 71.2% of the profession” in the UK. They were asked “Why aren’t there more female philosopher..