Women in Philosophy? Do the Math

Many of us have had the experience of sitting on an airplane and being asked by the person in the next seat, “What do you do?”
It is a moment of uncertainty: what to say? There are risks if you reply, “I’m a philosopher,” for you may then have the neighbor expounding “their philosophy” at length, or recounting how awful their experience was when taking Philosophy 101. (“We read some crazy article about being kidnapped and hooked up to a famous violinist to keep him alive!”) One time, a male friend of mine got the enthusiastic response, “Oh, you’re a philosopher? Tell me some of your sayings!” However, when I’ve tried the “I’m a philosopher” reply, it has prompted laughter. Once when I queried why the laughter, the response was, “I think of philosophers as old men with beards, and you’re definitely not that! You’re too young and attractive to be a philosopher.” I’m sure he intended this as a compliment. But I stopped giving the answer “I’m a philosopher.”

‘Bad actors’ are a problem, but the deeper problem is the context that gives ‘bad actors’ power.

Although most philosophers these days are not old men with beards, most professional philosophers are men; in fact, white men. It is a surprise to almost everyone that the percentage of women earning philosophy doctorates is less than in most of the physical sciences (see chart). As recently as 2010, philosophy had a lower percentage of women doctorates than math, chemistry and economics. Note, however, that of these fields, philosophy has made the most progress on this count in the past five years.

The percentage of women philosophers in the faculty ranks is much more difficult to determine. Although for decades the American Philosophical Association’s Committee on the Status of Women lobbied the association to collect demographic data, it failed to do so. We have mostly relied on the efforts of individuals to do head counts. The best data we have suggests that in 2011, the tenured/tenure-track faculty in the 51 graduate programs ranked by the Leiter Report — the most widely used status ranking of anglophone philosophy departments — included only 21.9 percent women.
This is potentially quite misleading, however, for the Digest of Education Statistics reports that in 2003 (the most recent data compiled for philosophy), the percentage of women in full-time instructional post-secondary positions was a mere 16.6 percent of the total 13,000 philosophers, a year when 27.1 percent of the doctorates went to women. Soon we will know more, however, for the A.P.A. has thankfully started to collect demographic data.
The numbers of philosophers of color, especially women of color, is even more appalling. The 2003 number quoted above of 16.6 percent full-time women philosophy instructors includes zero women of color. Apparently there was insufficient data for any racial group of women other than white women to report. The A.P.A. Committee on the Status of Black Philosophers and the Society of Young Black Philosophers reports that currently in the United States there are 156 blacks in philosophy, including doctoral students and philosophy Ph.D.’s in academic positions; this includes a total of 55 black women, 31 of whom hold tenured or tenure-track positions. Assuming that there are still 13,000 full-time philosophy instructors in the United States, the representation of scholars of color is plausibly worse than in any other field in the academy, including not only physics, but also engineering. Inexcusable.
With these numbers, you don’t need sexual harassment or racial harassment to prevent women and minorities from succeeding, for alienation, loneliness, implicit bias, stereotype threat, microaggression, and outright discrimination will do the job. But in a world of such small numbers, harassment and bullying is easy.
“Bad actors” are a problem, but the deeper problem is the context that gives “bad actors” power. Change needs to happen on multiple fronts for us to make progress. Philosophy lacks the infrastructure that other disciplines have to bring about systematic change. We don’t have the funding or the clout of anything like the National Science Foundation.
We do have a small community of feminist and antiracist activists and some important recent changes in the governance of the A.P.A. — like the appointment a new executive director, Amy Ferrer, who not only has a strong background in non-profit administration, but also a degree in women’s studies. The McGinn case is a tipping-point, not because it has taken down someone with great power and influence, but because his case and the response to it demonstrates that the persistent activism of the past 20 years is becoming institutionalized. We are the winning side now. We will not relent; so it is only a matter of time.
A more thorough collection of data on women in philosophy is available from The American Philosophical Association’s Committee on the Status of Women.
Next post: “What’s Wrong With Philosophy?” by Linda Martin Alcoff.

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Sally Haslanger is a professor of philosophy and the former director of women’s and gender studies at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and the president of the Eastern Division of the American Philosophical Association. She was awarded the Distinguished Woman Philosopher of the year in 2010 by the Society of Women in Philosophy. A collection of her papers, “Resisting the Real: Social Construction and Social Critique” was published by Oxford University Press in 2012.