As readers may recall, last week I formulated the hypothesis that women may be submitting papers to conferences less often than men do, even if relative to the absolute numbers of women and men in a given area/field. I suggested there could be all kinds of reasons why this might be so, but in particular that women may feel more inclined to conclude that their work does not fit the description of the conference, or that it’s just not ‘good enough’. This would be related to the well-documented phenomenon of higher standards being applied to women, which many of them then go on to internalize. Subsequent discussion both here at NewAPPS and at the post over at Feminist Philosophers linking to my post have been very illuminating (at least speaking for myself). It seems clear to me now that it is very likely that many women indeed shy away from submitting papers (to conferences, volumes etc.), simply assuming that what they have to say will not be perceived as relevant.
Coincidentally, a few days ago the same Feminist Philosophers had a post linking to an excellent article at the Feministing blog, which is precisely about the need to increase the visibility of women, in particular as speakers at conferences (the article’s starting point was the poor gender balance at the otherwise excellent TED conferences). The article also offers a very thorough list of facts and figures clearly showing that women are still severely under-represented at several levels (political, artistic etc.) One passage from the article, on what can and should be done to redress the imbalance, strikes me as deeply right:
Topping the list of “to do’s” in my opinion, are: 1) improving women’s self esteem, and 2) convincing men that empowering women is as much to their benefit as it is to ours. I’ll leave the latter for others to tackle… One way to help improve women’s self esteem is to provide visible role models that clearly demonstrate that there are no boundaries to that which we can aspire and achieve.
Clearly, what I was trying to get at with my previous post here and my post on getting women to apply for jobs at M-Phi was something along the lines of 1). Apparently, women tend to have low self-esteem and to be pessimistic about their (professional and otherwise) potential simply because this is the message they receive all their lives. Some of us somehow manage either to remain oblivious or to resist the 'message', but arguably the majority of women internalize and self-apply the higher standards that are typically applied to them externally. One of the commentators at Feminist Philosophers suggests exactly that:
I (a woman philosopher) can relate. My self-confidence is very low when it comes to submitting work for conferences, or casting a wide net when applying for jobs. My work in ethics is not exactly mainstream and I assume, at the outset, that my paper will be rejected. So, why submit? My spouse, a philosopher as well, forces me to submit conference papers.
My low self-esteem comes straight from grad school where I had been practically the sole woman and did not find a mentor either. The boys in my program excluded me and people who read my work mainly “went through the motions.” I think my essays are good, solid and have been very well received whenever I presented them. But I always anticipate rejection.
The extent to which this reaction is widespread among women in general is an open question, but my feeling is that it is very common. So what could be done? Of course, most probably a wide range of measures would be required to start redressing such problems; but specifically with respect to getting women to submit papers to conferences, Elizabeth Barnes offered a very interesting suggestion at the Feminist Philosophers post:
I was on the program committee for the Bellingham Summer Philosophy Conference this year. The BSPC works very hard to maintain a good gender balance, but it’s had trouble in the past getting enough submissions from women, despite being a very woman-friendly conference. Both this year and last year, the program committee tried actively soliciting submissions from female philosophers. This tactic was very successful.
(Indeed, indeed! Notice that BSPC also offfers help with child-care arrangements.) So the suggestion would be that conference organizers could draft lists of women doing interesting work in the relevant area(s) and send them a notice to draw their attention to the conference and the CFP; the notice must be well-phrased though, so as to avoid the potential presumption of automatic acceptance (this seems to me to be the trickiest bit). But by simply signaling that they are aware of their work and that they deem it appropriate and relevant for the conference in question, organizers may already give some women the ‘ego-boost’ they may need in order to go ahead and submit a paper. This strikes me as a very reasonable thing to be tried, and even if it may entail slightly more work for the organizers (mainly with respect to drafting the list, otherwise it can possibly simply be a collective email), I think it is totally worth trying. I for one will certainly give it a try the next time I organize a conference. (Personally, I remember something like that happening to me a few times when I was a graduate student; at some occasions, I was explicitly encouraged (in conversation) to submit to certain conferences which I might otherwise have viewed as being 'out of my league'.)
And by the way, a useful tool to come up with names of people working in a given area (women or otherwise) is the wonderful PhiPapers and its categories. It goes without saying, but I will say it anyway, that the strategy of contacting members of a given under-represented group when organizing a conference can be applied to groups other than women. In fact, it can potentially also be applied to e.g. junior scholars and/or graduate students doing good work in a given area, who may also need the so-called 'ego-boost' to go ahead and submit a paper.
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