Philosophers and women.

  

This issue has been discussed for years by men and women in philosophy. Of all departments of humanities at British universities, only departments of philosophy have a mere 25 percent female membership. Why should it be so? How can you redress the balance?

Overall, I strongly oppose intervention, quotas, or otherwise, to increase women's employment opportunities, regardless of the field, and there is nothing inherently harmful about this imbalance. I sure don't think it shows a conscious prejudice against women. Nor can it be clarified by the fact that women are inherently less concerned with theory, above all with arguments. There may be some women who think emotionally rather than rationally; but there are some men who do likewise, heaven knows. Nor do I think women dislike the idea of philosophy due to its allegedly adversarial style. Rather of finding truth or consensus, its commitment to winning a case. For I do not think this style is peculiar to philosophy when adopted in academic dispute.

No, I think academic philosophy has become an extremely inward-looking topic, devoted not too revealing and exploring the consequences of the way we think about the world but to revealing flaws in other philosophers' arguments instead. If you are picking up a technical journal right now, you can find nothing but nitpicking replies to previous posts. Women seem to get bored with that more quickly than men do. It seems that theory stops being fascinating only as it starts being competent.

 I believe philosophically that there is little or no deliberate prejudice against women. But this is not to suggest that there is not any latent bias. The puzzle is why philosophy should have this stronger than other disciplines. The answer, I think, is to be found within the self-image of philosophy. Philosophers tended to have an inflated sense of their ability to "follow the argument wherever it leads," as the old sight of Plato has. What counts is the case, not the reasoning, which means that gender or ethnicity should not even be considered. Therefore philosophers felt immune to the distorting effects of gender bias. Logic is gender-neutral, philosophy is logical, philosophy about ergo is gender-neutral. I suspect that this has resulted in complacency, blindness to all how gender bias creeps in I admit that this explanation is somewhat speculative for at least part of women's under-representation in philosophy, but I would be interested to hear what you are doing about it.