Despite its place among the humanities and social sciences, the career prospects and numbers of women in philosophy much more closely resemble those of women in the sciences and engineering, than in cognate disciplinary areas. This book collects a series of critical essays by female philosophers, to pursue the question of why philosophy continues to be inhospitable to women and what can be done to change it. By examining the social and institutional conditions of contemporary academic philosophy in the Anglophone world, as well as its methods, culture, and characteristic commitments, the volum ... More

Despite its place among the humanities and social sciences, the career prospects and numbers of women in philosophy much more closely resemble those of women in the sciences and engineering, than in cognate disciplinary areas. This book collects a series of critical essays by female philosophers, to pursue the question of why philosophy continues to be inhospitable to women and what can be done to change it. By examining the social and institutional conditions of contemporary academic philosophy in the Anglophone world, as well as its methods, culture, and characteristic commitments, the volume provides a case study in interpretation of one academic discipline in which women’s progress seems to have stalled since initial gains made in the 1980’s. Some contributors make use of concepts developed in other contexts to explain women’s under-representation, including the effects of unconscious biases, stereotype threat, and micro-inequities, adapting these to make evident their salience for understanding specific situations in philosophy. Other chapters draw on the resources of feminist philosophy to challenge everyday understandings of time, communication, authority and merit, as these shape effective but often unrecognised forms of discrimination and exclusion. Often it is assumed that women need to change to fit existing institutions. This book instead offers concrete reflections on the way in which philosophy needs to change, in order to accommodate and benefit from the important contribution women’s full participation makes to the discipline.