Crossposted at the Feminist Philosophers and What is it like to be a woman in philosophy?, there is a moving 'open call for reasons to stay':
I am about to start my PhD at an excellent Leiter ranked program. I have a BA and and MA from excellent schools. I have worked closely with ground breaking philosophers in my field. I have published, I have an excellent teaching resume, phenomenal letters of recommendation, and moreover I love my job. I am a good philosopher, and I am thinking about leaving philosophy.
I have been a secretary and a chauffeur. I have been disingenuously promised research assistantships and letters of recommendation, in return for dinner dates and car rides. I have been asked if I was married while my colleagues have been asked what they think. I have been told that I’m both cute and idiotic. I have passed on professional opportunities because I am a woman, and no one would believe that I deserved those opportunities — accepting would make me seem like a slut, since men make it on merit, and women make it in bed. So, ironically, I have been praised as professional for having passed on professional opportunities. I have been the lone woman presenting at the conference, and I have been the woman called a bitch for declining sexual relations with one of the institutions of hosts. I think I have just about covered the gamut of truly egregiously atrocious sexist behaviour. So I just have this one question that I think I need answered: Is the choice between doing philosophy, and living under these conditions, or saving yourself, and leaving the discipline?
This is an open call for reasons to stay.
My first reaction is: if you truly enjoy being a philosopher, if it feels like it is what you were meant to be all along, that should be the main reason to stay. But ultimately, it has to be a matter of weighting pros and cons, and if you feel that fighting against adversity is just too much to ask for in spite of how passionate you feel about philosophy (rewards not compensating for losses), then ultimately it may still not be worth it.
I'd like to be able to tell you that it gets better; it does, but it will probably still take a while if you are just about to start your graduate studies. So my main advice would be to actively seek environments which are less hostile to women; the program you are about to start may be Leiter-excellent, but it may not be the best place to be at as a woman (in fact, perhaps Leiter should add a 'niceness-friendliness' factor to the ranking, and not only related to gender considerations -- that is, if the main goal of the ranking is helping graduate students make their choices). Although sexism in the philosophy profession is widespread, there are still a few places where one can avoid being exposed to a big chunk of it (MIT comes to mind, for example). One may think that insulating oneself from sexism in such places is not going to solve the problem, given that the need to go 'out there' in the world (attend conferences etc.) is still there. But I truly believe that, once you develop a sense of confidence fueled by a supportive main environment, it becomes much easier to deal with the rest elsewhere.
I encourage readers to share their thoughts on why women such as the author of these lines should (or should not) stay in philosophy, either in comments here or over at the Feminist Philosophers blog.
Relatedly, a few weeks back, I read Mark Lance's contribution to the 'What we are doing...' blog, which was deeply moving. It is about how his department reacted to the premature death of a former graduate student; they organized a beautiful memorial event, which according to Mark reflects the culture of genuine care for people in general at his department. His conclusion:
So my thought is that if a department wants to be non-sexist, it would help to just in general be a kind, caring, hard-working, competent community. (That’s the kind most likely to deal quickly with any sexism that arises, after all.) And if one wants to be this sort of community, the best way to be it is to start doing it. Just start taking care of each other in all the small and large ways, and do it as collectively as possible, and after a while, you will have a different culture.
It seems so obvious, and yet so utterly under-apreciated.
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