New APPS

Art, Politics, Philosophy, Science. Mostly Philosophy.

recent posts

about

    Women of Philosophy!

    A new site was launched: Women of Philosophy, an online database collecting information about women currently working in philosophy and their research. It has lots of nice features, such as divisions per area (although some seem not to be operational yet), main and secondary areas of expertise per person, as well as personal and PhilPapers websites listed – and all this with an extremely user-friendly layout. It is a brand-new project, so there may well be quite a few women philosophers missing in the database (so go submit your entries!). However, in the long run, it is likely that all the numerous lists of women working in different areas of philosophy scattered around the internet will become superfluous thanks to this database (which is great news! There is much to be said about a unified database such as this one).

    Other laudable efforts to promote diversity in philosophy –  not only along the gender dimension – are underway: the PhilPapers crew seems to be working on a database to contain all professional philosophers (they do not shy away from big projects!), listed under a number of diversity categories. So more and more, there will be little excuse not to engage in promoting diversity in philosophy, now that there is an increasing number of useful resources available to all.

    Posted in , ,

    6 responses to “Women of Philosophy!”

    1. J Avatar
      J

      This is a great resource!
      It is perplexing, however, that no credit is given to the editors of those other lists, whose contents seem to have been drawn on pretty heavily in compiling this one.

      Like

      Reply
    2. Catarina Dutilh Novaes Avatar
      Catarina Dutilh Novaes

      I see your point, but to be honest it didn’t bother me (and I’m the manager of the women in logic list!). I guess it wouldn’t have hurt to add a quick acknowledgment, but I think the work that went into making this database went waaaay beyond just getting info from other lists. But anyway, point taken.

      Like

      Reply
    3. Jon Cogburn Avatar
      Jon Cogburn

      Oh wow this is great! I hope it grows and is complete at least with respect to women in the Philpapers database.
      It will be such a fantastic resource with respect to conference organizing that those of us who have a statement of support for the gendered conference campaign in our e-mail sign offs can link to it in those sign offs.

      Like

      Reply
    4. Lisa Shapiro Avatar
      Lisa Shapiro

      While the previously collected lists do seem to have been drawn upon (though not credited, as J notes), they have not be comprehensively subsumed into the database. I do not know whether data entry is still in process or not, but in the meantime, women philosophers should not assume that they are entered into the database just because they were added to a spreadsheet a while back.
      Although I fully appreciate the appearance of this very useful and user-friendly, web-searchable database, as someone who spent a fair amount of time and energy, as well as resources, compiling one of those spreadsheets, and passing it on to those building the database once I learned about the project, I feel as if a lot of that effort has been wasted.
      Nonetheless, this is likely to be a far more durable resource than a spreadsheet that needs to be maintained.

      Like

      Reply
    5. Lisa Shapiro Avatar
      Lisa Shapiro

      I might have posted a bit too soon, as I just received an email responding to a query and noting that not all the data has been entered. I would simply encourage those building the database to persist in including all the data that has been compiled. [A lot of work went into compiling the women historians list!! It was not simply crowdsourced] And at the same time I encourage those who have already been included in a list to make sure they have been included in the database and to add themselves if they are not there.

      Like

      Reply
    6. jackie taylor Avatar
      jackie taylor

      Extending Lisa’s point, please email the resource link to women philosophers you know who you do not see on the list.

      Like

      Reply

    Leave a reply to Jon Cogburn Cancel reply