We've had lots of discussions on this blog about how the climate for women in Philosophy compares to other disciplines. Here is, if not some data, at least some anecdote.
What do readers think? Does this provide a foothold for pursuing that discussion? If so, what can we (provisionally) conclude?
I would like to read this anecdote, but for me the link doesn’t work: I get forwarded to http://www.salon.com/topic/2014/ (which gives no reference to anything about chemistry). If I search the entire site (http://www.salon.com/search/?q=chemistry), the title and the abstract of the article do show up, but if I click the link, then the same happens as before.
Has the article been removed, or can this be due to regional restrictions?
LikeLike
The link works for me. Here is the URL:
http://www.salon.com/2014/02/20/sexism_plagues_major_chemistry_conference_boycott_emerges_amid_growing_outrage/
LikeLike
For me, the link still doesn’t work. For those who experience the same problem, here is a link to the cached version.
LikeLike
The dimensions of “climate” in a profession or discipline are difficult to characterize accurately, I think, because our everyday encounters with it are so granular, so particular, so personal.
Because I was trained (at the PhD level) in both the disciplines under comparison here, I have some anecdata, but even with those it’s hard to compare them in an apples-to-apples kind of way (e.g., I was half a decade older when I experienced philosophy’s climate as a grad student than I was when I experienced chemistry’s climate as a grad student; my faculty experience as a chemist was as contingent faculty at a community college rather than tenure track faculty at a teaching-focused state university, etc.) The point being, probably best to take my impressions as just that.
My overriding impression is that the climate for women in chemistry and in philosophy is a lot more similar than most people (in either field) would expect. There seem to be similar levels of gendered bias at work (which, given we’re using similar brains in the same larger societal environment, makes sense), similar marginalization of women’s research as somehow “objectively” not as good or important as men’s research, similar difficulty in getting women on the conference programs unless women are well-represented on the program committees.
In both fields I have encountered sexism from those training me and from students I have helped train. In both fields I have been sexually harassed.
The one salient difference is that chemistry’s climate seems like it might be improving at a faster rate. My hunch is that this is because chemists are more likely to meet actual empirical data (about the effects of implicit bias and so forth) and recognize evidence of a problem that ought to be faced, whereas philosophers seem always to be ready to try one more argument from first principles that there really is no problem to confront (at least not one whose necessary and sufficient conditions can be nailed down with appropriate precision) and/or that what would be required to address the problem might conceivably restrict someone’s freedom so we really can’t do that.
Given that I have thrown my professional lot in with the philosophers, this makes me sad.
LikeLike
Janet, I agree with the and/or sentiment. It is difficult to understand how opening up environments to less hostile or depressing interactions restricts people’s freedoms, but that’s the same impression I have about how the move is conceived by those resisting it, as about restriction of certain people’s freedoms.
Maybe from a broader perspective, responsibility towards another restricts freedoms, because it limits the actions available for the habitual praxis people find themselves in (“But this is the way we’ve always… “).
As Kress says in the article: “Those who work harder, overcome their capability deficient and make themselves equal to or better than their colleagues. Hard work is the way to address the capability issue and thus achieve equality.” It is hard work to overcome one’s unearned advantages and conferred dominance, but it’s possible and rewarding.
LikeLike
New APPS 
Leave a reply to Charles R Cancel reply