someone used their privilege to do something!

I would like public speaking to be more taught. But I also think it's about more than that - I know women who've done the debate team at school who become tongue-tied when they end up in class with men, and it's not because they don't know how to debate, it's that public speaking usually has clear rules, and a university class sometimes doesn't. And some people even think it's somehow a good thing that the shy get shouted down because they'll 'learn to fight their corner', which IME isn't true.

Enjoy the batman, lurcio!

Back in a mo, just gotta play batman

Btw, I am about both the philosophy and the research science. That's pretty cool! How did you find the transition? Do you find the science more woman friendly?

(Ignore me if I'm being nosy)

That's interesting, lurcio, I'd not thought about styles of argument and socialization but it makes sense. I wonder if that is changing?

I used to be an academic philosopher (at a Russell league university). I'm now a research scientist. I think what these two are doing is bloody brilliant.

Here's some thoughts. Back when I was lecturing in the subject philosophy was the only discipline in the arts faculties of most universities to have more men than women even at undergraduate level. I remember having an interesting discussion with a housemate (who's still a professional philosopher) about the typical style of argument in philosophical debate which tended to be very aggressive and adversarial. As he pointed out, this is a gendered thing - women tend to be socialised to dislike this style of argument, whereas a certain type of man thrives on it (interestingly, I quite liked an adversarial spat, he disliked them intensely - both of us, btw, believed strongly that gender is a social construct, so weren't going to make the mistake of thinking that this came down to testosterone levels or some such essentialist, reductionist crap). His comments, and those of students I taught made me change my teaching style totally - you can have just as good and intellectually rigorous a discussion while being cooperative rather than confrontational. So I suspect that a lot of academic philosophy is conducted in a way which alienates women, members of minority groups, and so on.

Incidentally, this is true of the university sector more broadly. For instance, women are paid less, not just because there are more male professors, but because at every single level in academia (lecturer A, lecturer B, senior lecturer, reader, professor) women are paid on average less than their male counterparts. This came to light in a government report under Blair's watch, and not surprisingly was dismissed with a "well we can't afford to set it right" wave of the hand (the feet of clay of the left wing on women's issues is another bugbear of mine). Add to that the publish-or-die mentality which makes fitting a career round having children, and the general back-stabbiness of universities (you're usually competing with rival groups, not cooperating) and universities are pretty shit place to work if you're female.

But we gave you evidence. There are all-male conferences going on, and only one in five philosophy academics are women.

You know roughly half the human race are women, right?

Something can be worrying, with no studies to demonstrate it's being worrying, you know. What would the study say? 'In an extensive survey, we found that, indeed, one in five is rather different from 50/50, and all-male conferences are full of men and not women?'

I find it shocking you can suppose (supposition, tut tut) that there's 'nothing wrong' in philosophical academic when there are so many fewer women than men there. An absence of women doesn't strike you as something 'wrong'?

All I've done is ask for evidence, y'know, actual studies (not "experience" LRD. Anecdote is not meaningful.), to support the assertion that there is something wrong with the current situation in philosphy in the first place.

I'm surprised by the amount of empty huffing and puffing and this has produced. I get the impression no one in this thread actually cares whether this move is, in reality, "positive" or not. It simply coincides with the values of your belief system and that's all that matters.

"You seem keen to turn every nice thread into a nasty one - you're doing exactly the same on the thread about positive things about feminism. It's very wearing."

Asking for fact-based evidence is being nasty? Lol.

As for your "FWIW" comment, I don't actually hold any opinion, as I said... "I don't "think", i.e. idly speculate, anything of presumed gender-based discrimination within academic philosophy because I don't have any evidence based knowledge on the matter."

I supposed there is nothing wrong with philosophical academia because so far there's no evidence to the contrary in this thread, despite me having asked for it. It may well be a cesspit of female-supressing patriarchs, but if so, prove it.

You seem unable to do this.

And then after that we'll have to shift it to ... can we have more than one woman, please? Can we have 50/50?

But yes, it sounds like progress.

Or, women didn't even consider complaining about all-male conferences because they were busy thanking their lucky stars they got to the one that wasn't!

Actually, chibi, that makes me think again how impressive what they're doing is - they're not only lessening the prestige of these conferences by boycotting them, they're also risking losing their own prestige by making a stir about this. It's really good.

I would be interested to see what happens in the end - whether most other people start making women's participation in conferences and attracting more women into the discipline a priority, or whether they end up with alternative conferences happening in competition with the male-only ones.

Don't be ridiculous. We're discussing possibilities. Neither of us is a female philosopher, much less one of those not invited to these conferences, so of course we don't have direct experience.

Neither do you.

So we are all in the same boat.

Do you have some kind of problem with us discussing a very positive step, and appreciating what these blokes have done, that makes you want to dub our celebrating this as 'complaining'?

You seem keen to turn every nice thread into a nasty one - you're doing exactly the same on the thread about positive things about feminism. It's very wearing.

FWIW, you used an 'if ... then' formulae in your post ('If there's no actual impediment to the careers of female philosophers as a consequence of these all-male conferences, then so what if only 20% of academics in this field are female?'). As the philosophers would explain to you, this is a formal way of making a supposition, yes? And I am challenging your premise when I ask why you assume this.

Do you have some kind of problem with formal logic, as well as feminism, or were you just unaware of what you were writing?

"What makes you assume there's no 'actual' impediment to the careers of female philosophers?"

I said "If...'". You do know what that word means, don't you?

LRDtheFeministDragon
"There are well known impediments to the careers of female academics in general, I doubt philosophers are any different. "

chibi
"i am not a female philosopher, but i am going out on a limb here and speculating that not being invited to conferences might mean not networking with peers, thus not being 'known' thus not being invited to collaborate on articles, and thus not getting published in trade mags

i think this could indeed have a negative impact on your career"

Supposition.

Do either of you have any direct evidence that these all-male conferences have damaged any female academic's philosophy career? A simple 'yes' or 'no' will do. If the answer is 'no' then you have nothing to complain about, other than the sake of complaining.

I'm on the programme committee for the conference held by my professional body (large body, housands of members) and having a good mix of men and women overall, in plenaries and as keynote speakers is something we are very conscious of, for the reasons given above. This is normal practice in a lot of ioelds now and I am quite shocked philosophy needed this push. But pleased these men have stood up against it.

That's true, I agree.

In any academic arena, but especially in a subject like philosophy, the harm caused by consistently narrow representation (I.e. all male, all white, all anything) is not limited to the careers of the non-represented group. In fact that is almost the least of it. The harm is to the subject itself which is limited by its inability to tap into the breadth of talent and experience that it otherwise could. These philosophers aren't doing this simply for the benefit of female academic philosophers but for the benefit of philosophy itself.

I think it's probably obvious to you and me because we've heard it before. It always surprises me how many people don't notice.

I think being in a minority can be really tricky because of people's expectations being stereotyped - it reminds me of a story I heard Zadie Smith tell. Now she went up for interview at Kings with Pete de Bolla, and she is of course mixed race, and female. And he asked her all about postcolonialism (why not?) and she wasn't very communicative, so he asked her all about women's writing ...

She got in, and she told the story very graciously, but you did see that he'd rather picked topics of discussion he expected her to be interested in - he was wrong footed by what she looked like, and she was wrong footed because she wasn't actually fulfilling his stereotype.

When she talked about this I think it was clear he wasn't being in the slightest deliberately discriminatory, and she clearly likes him very much - but it was a story that really made me think, how people can do things in a well-meaning way, but still be unconsciously biased.

Yes, exactly chibi!

And you've got to ask, if female academics are being invited and not going, why is that? Something I think isn't uncommon in some areas is that if female academics are also mothers, they may find a conference that starts at 9am in central London, has no creche, and finishes at 7.30, is simply not possible to fit around childcare. Women academics do report far more childcare issues that male academics who're fathers.

I wondered if that might be an issue, because it's no good if you're inviting the odd token women and they never come - you need to know why.