This post by Tania Lombrozo on the causes of the gender imbalance in philosophy has been widely shared and reshared on Facebook and other venues, but (at Tony Chemero's suggestion) I figured it might still be worth posting a link to it here, for those who may have missed it.
Until recently, most of these hypotheses lacked empirical grounding. Collecting relevant data is no easy task, and social scientists weren't exactly lining up for the task. So part of the excitement last Friday — as we waited for a presentation titled "Women and Philosophy: Why is it 'Goodbye' at 'Hello'?" — was the promise of data. The speakers were Toni Adleberg and Morgan Thompson, two master's degree students at Georgia State University, presenting preliminary findings from work with Professor Eddy Nahmias.
One of the conclusions is that "the biggest drop in the proportion of women in the philosophy pipeline seems to be from enrollment in an introductory philosophy class to becoming a philosophy major." If that's the case, one obvious suggestion presents itself: increase the presence of women philosophers in introductory syllabi.
With the support of the Georgia State Department of Philosophy, for example, the researchers will test out one strategy for attracting more women to the major: this fall, graduate student instructors will use course syllabi with 20 percent or more female authors, at least doubling the current proportions.
This is of course an idea that has been put forward many times before, but it will be interesting to see if it will have the desired effect of keeping women on board. We hope it will!
UPDATE: A few months ago Helen had a post up precisely on the topic of suggestions of literature by women for intro classes, including the link for a Google spreadsheet where people could add items.
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