Solaris

October 2, 2009, 6:30 am

A Dearth of Woman Philosophers

Today’s idea: Do women shun philosophy because of its climate of aggressive argumentation? Some academics think so.

Philosophy | Writing in The Philosophers’ Magazine, Brooke Lewis says tallies of full-time faculty at top American and British colleges show women make up less than a fifth of philosophy departments in Britain and little more than that in the United States. This suggests “that gender representation is far less balanced in philosophy than it is in many other humanities subjects.”

What’s going on? Helen Beebee, director of the British Philosophical Association, says one reason may be that women are turned off by a culture of aggressive argument particular to philosophy, which grows increasingly more pronounced at the postgraduate level. “I can remember being a Ph.D. student and giving seminar papers and just being absolutely terrified that I was going to wind up intellectually beaten to a pulp by the audience,” she says. “I can easily imagine someone thinking, ‘This is just ridiculous. Why would I want to pursue a career where I open myself up to having my work publicly trashed on a regular basis?’ ”

Meantime, Australian philosophers — typically “direct, unpretentious, and no-nonsense” in style — seem to be the hot export to American universities, a separate article says. On the Other Hand Dept.: Not all are men.

http://ideas.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/10/02/a-dearth-of-women-philosophers/