someone used their privilege to do something!

[chibi]

two philosophers have used their professional standing within their community to take a stand and not accept invitations to participate in male only events, see here

they have also challeneged their colleagues to do the same

it is a v male dominated field, but apparently 20% are women - they aren't all stupid, or too busy washing their hair, or phobic about public gatherings

how great would it be if this extended into other fields - i am thinking of the recent amnesty event that was all-male see here

this is how paradigms get shifted, i think

Good for them!

I don't like the argument that all-male conferences are fine because the organizers might have invited women who couldn't make it - you have to question why the women couldn't make it!

As long as these all-male gatherings aren't so prevalent that they become detrimental to the careers of female academics, then I see no problem. Equally I'd have no objection to all-female conferences, with the preceeding caveat in place.

I understood the article to be implying they did feel these all-male gatherings were too prevalent. I think if only 20% of the field are women, all-female gatherings would be rather different - because women aren't numerically dominant.

"As long as these all-male gatherings aren't so prevalent that they become detrimental to the careers of female academics , then I see no problem."

Implications are ten-a-penny, evidence is a little harder to come by.

I didn't see any of the latter in the article.

You think only 1 in 5 of these academics are women for no good reason, then?

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. Unfashionable as my stance may be, I'm not going to assume the evil masterminds at Patriarchy HQ are behind every single gender imbalance in the world.

If in this case you can prove otherwise then by all means do so.

What am I supposed to be proving? And why should I?

These academics boycotted male-only conferences. Personally I think that was rather a good thing to do, especially in a subject where only one in five academics is a woman. Need there be more to it than that?

Surely it is a matter of personal experience - they felt it was the right thing to do, they did it. Maybe if we'd been there, we'd have felt the same, maybe not.

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?

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

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

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

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.

well indeed LRD it seemed kind of too obvious so i thought maybe it was a trick question from uppercut

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.

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.

That's true, I agree.

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.

"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.

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?

ok

let's assume that attendance at these conferences has no impact whatsoever on careers, or, indeed on the discipline (in the way that namegame suggested)

why do men bother going? what's in it for them? why do academic conferences make a big song and dance about who will be speaking, and how important/illustrious/interesting they are?

at present, it is kind of it is fun pretending that you are posting in good faith, uppercut, but i fear it is ultimately just that - a pretense

what do you get out of arguing that everything is just fine, nothing to see here folks, move on?

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.

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!

i think this counts as shifting the overton window - a previously unexamined practice becomes a chance to ask 'why are we doing it this way? what is our rationale for inviting people'

hopefully this will start happening more in other disciplines too, namegame's post makes me feel hopeful for this, and we will stop seeing the defacto all male shortlists/committees/etc that exist currently

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.

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.