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34 responses to “A Bechdel test for philosophy papers”

1. 

   Matt

   April 3, 2014

   What would “because she discusses a man” come to exactly? I worry that this might rule out a huge percentage of work in the history of philosophy, among others, but maybe that would depend on what “because” and “discusses” mean.

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2. 

   Helen De Cruz

   April 3, 2014

   As I put in the OP, I didn’t come up with #3, but the way I interpret it is that the paper to pass the philosophy Bechdel test should cite substantive original scholarship by female authors, rather than response pieces to male authors (you’re right that otherwise a huge percentage of work in history of philosophy would not qualify, and I would say a paper on, say, an aspect of Hume or Kant’s work would be substantive scholarship)

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3. 

   Grymes

   April 3, 2014

   A huge percentage of movies don’t pass the Bechdel test. That’s the point. (Failing the test doesn’t mean your work is bad (or not ‘substantive scholarship’, to use Helen’s phrase). It just means your work is ultimately about what men have said. If the only women you’re citing are talking about what dead white men have said, then it seems plausible to say that your work is still, ultimately, about what men have said (though you are probably still due some slack because you’ve met criterion 2.)

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4. 

   John Schwenkler

   April 3, 2014

   I like this very much. Perhaps, though, in line with what’s been said in connection with the Gendered Conference Campaign, the standard should take into account how many total authors are discussed. E.g. #female should be at least 1 if #total is 3 (or 2?) or more, at least 2 if #total > 5, etc.

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5. 

   Carolyn Dicey Jennings

   April 3, 2014

   In checking whether my own papers pass the test I came across a question: do the female (women) authors have to be philosophers? The first paper of mine that I looked at passes the test, but the relevant authors are psychologists.

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6. 

   Eric Winsberg

   April 3, 2014

   I also think #3 needs to be refined. Suppose I’m writing on Gettier problems and I cite Linda Zagzebski’s famous article. There is an obvious sense in which this violates #3, but that doesn’t seem fair. In fact, I worry that most papers in philosophy can be described this sort of way.

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7. 

   Matt

   April 3, 2014

   Yes, I know the test well. I was just trying to understand what’s meant by the 3rd prong here. Especially given that lots of top historical work is done by women, I wanted to see how people were understanding it. (I actually think it’s probably mistaken more generally, and that “discusses a man” in philosophy, even in a discussion piece, isn’t like “talks about a man” in the movies, but I’m not sure about it, and thought it would be helpful in thinking about it to see what people had in mind.) It also seems to be too narrow a conception of the history of philosophy to think that it’s “ultimately” about what “dead [people of any sort] have said”, though of course some people do approach it that way. It’s certainly not the only way to do so.

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8. 

   Helen De Cruz

   April 3, 2014

   That’s a really good point. My intuition here would be to say “no”, if only because I think it’s a good thing that philosophy papers incorporate some non-philosophical authors (I’m personally very enthusiastic about naturalistic approaches, where philosophers should engage with the questions, methods and results of other disciplines. Also, undercitation of women goes further than just philosophy, as I seem to remember (but don’t have the reference handy) that also papers in the sciences that have a female first author are on average cited fewer times.) This is a general observation, and there is some variation. For instance, if I cite a female developmental psychologist, I’m citing someone from a field where women are very well represented and cited.

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9. 

   Grymes

   April 3, 2014

   Thanks for your response, Matt. I guess it seems to me that the point of the Bechdel test is to get movies to explore more standpoints, and that that should also be the point of the test for philosophy papers. (Of course, failure to explore minority standpoints is far from the only problem with male-centric citation practices, so I could be wrong about this.) Obviously it helps to discuss women who have great takes on Kant or whomever. But it seems better still to discuss women who have great takes on Mary Astell or whomever.
   With regard to both history and the case Eric mentions: violating #3 shouldn’t take away from the good of fulfilling #2. But fulfilling #3 does seem to me obviously to be a further good.

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10. 

    Grymes

    April 3, 2014

    To be polemical: why is the fact that “most papers in philosophy can be described this sort of way” a problem with the (admittedly stringent) test, rather than a problem with philosophy? (Or, perhaps, just not a problem at all. Passing the test could just be grounds for high praise (along one dimension), rather than the norm.)

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11. 

    Eric Winsberg

    April 3, 2014

    Well, I guess I think philosophy is supposed to be a dialogue of sorts. I think its normal and unproblematic that most philosophy papers are responding to past work. And I guess the reason I think its a problem with the test is that it places the conditions for passing the test too far in the past:
    I take one of the points of the original test is to evaluate the overall situation in Hollywood, rather than any particular movie. One is meant to keep track of the depressingly small number of films that pass the test. But if the philosophical version depends not only on there being lots of good work by women to cite, but also on there being good work by women that is either responding to even older work by women or that starts ex nihilo (which is very rare) than the test is telling us more about the past than it is about the present.

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12. 

    Neil Van Leeuwen

    April 3, 2014

    I like the test too. I do, however, think that the counting of citations of co-authored papers should be clarified. If I refer to a paper in which one out of four authors is a woman, does that count? I also agree that unrefined 3 runs the risk of disqualifying all papers written in, say, ancient, which is probably an undesired result. Otherwise good!

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13. 

    Guess Who

    April 3, 2014

    Isn’t one problem with this test that it only reduces very drastically the already small numbers of papers cited which are written by women?
    Wouldn’t those low numbers suggest to some that the contributions of women to philosophy are only more marginal than the original numbers compiled by Healy?
    Certainly putting side by side the numbers for such papers with the numbers for men employing the analogous test would not seem likely to put the contributions of women in a favorable light. Most probably, they would simply exaggerate the extremes. The new rules will in effect require, for example, that two mostly independent events — whether an author is 1) a woman and 2) is talking about the ideas of another woman rather than those of a man — have come about. But if the number of women is say 20% and the events are independent, then for both to occur is probability 20%20%=4%. For men, the corresponding number would be 80%80%=64%. The new ratio of men to women is now 64%/4%=16, so that the proportion of men in then selected set would be 16/(16+1)=94%. And of course if the number of men and women in this fairly elite class is such that the number of women is well less than 20%, then the numbers take an even more dramatic downturn. Even at 15%, the ultimate percentage of men becomes 97%. If the proportion of women in the elite class from which one starts goes down even closer to the neighborhood of Healy’s number (less than 4%), forget it.
    Now these calculations again assume independence. But even if there’s some correlation between the events– so that, for example, women are somewhat more likely to talk about the ideas of another woman than the representation of women in philosophy would suggest– the numbers are still going to go down precipitously.
    Of course, one might use those low numbers argue for an unjustly poor representation of women — but the same numbers can be employed to argue the opposite case, that they aren’t pulling their weight.
    Why introduce a metric that might so readily backfire?

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14. 

    Helen De Cruz

    April 3, 2014

    Guess who: I am certainly not suggesting to introduce a new metric! To qualify even for (3) stringently read, I don’t think the bar is set very high. Suppose you write a paper on, say, teleosemantics, and you specifically talk about Nick Shea’s treatment of genes (so the topic of your paper would be the ideas of a man).
    Your paper would still pass this test if you briefly discussed the teleosemantics by, say, Ruth Millikan, and it had a citation to at least one other woman (even if just in a list of citations).
    I am in no way suggesting this be some sort of new rule or metric, but rather, just a quick and defeasible way to assess “Didn’t I just, implicit-bias wise overlook to cite female contributors to the discussion I’m tackling in my paper?”

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15. 

    Guess Who

    April 3, 2014

    Just to add my previous comment.
    The model I used was simplistic, since it assumed, for example, that the case of citing two women authors has roughly the same probability as the proportion of women in the profession.
    But the more critical point is that, even if one corrects for that and other simplistic assumptions, the numbers still take a dramatic downturn because of the effect of requiring two or more less than perfectly correlated events to take place, and the initial disparity between men and women.

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16. 

    Helen De Cruz

    April 3, 2014

    I think it does count, because, in philosophy, co-authorship always implies a substantial contribution. I know there are fields like physics where the lab director gets to put his or her name on each paper, with very little, if any work.
    The question of history of philosophy popped up before, which is why I think the test is just a quick measure to help one decide if one might have overlooked to cite female authors who made an important contribution. It’s definitely not a new rule or norm.

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17. 

    Philosopher of science

    April 3, 2014

    I think too much is being made of the data from Healy’s study of FOUR journals. The work of women philosophers are frequently studied and cited – from Google Scholar we see that Longino’s two most cited pieces were cited 2154 times and 803 times, Harding’s two most cited works were cited 5121 times and 4321 times, Cartwright’s two most cited works were cited 1386 times and 1406 times, and Darden’s two most cited works (both co-authored) were cited 1069 times and 422 times. All four of these authors have a work that is cited 1000+ times. They all work in philosophy of science. The four journals that Healy studied are not the main place where research in philosophy of science plays out. In my own research in social epistemology I often cite women – three papers of mine in mainstream philosophy of science journals include 6, 8 and 6 citations to works by women. On the other hand, two of my paper on the realism debate include no citations to works by women. This is largely a function of who works on which topics.

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18. 

    Mohan Matthen

    April 3, 2014

    I looked at my last ten publications and the Bechdel test proved to be no problem for any of them. But if I fell short, what conclusion would you draw? You write: “on the whole, it seems like a good rule of thumb to make sure women authors in one’s field are not implicitly overlooked when citing.” There are those I refrain from citing because I don’t like their work. If some happen to be women, should I reconsider? Should I reconsider when such people are male? And should people consider citing me because I am not white?

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19. 

    Sylvia Wenmackers

    April 4, 2014

    Mohan, you ask “There are those I refrain from citing because I don’t like their work. If some happen to be women, should I reconsider? Should I reconsider when such people are male? And should people consider citing me because I am not white?”
    As I understand the proposal, the answer is ‘no’ to all of these questions. For instance, people should not consider citing you because you are not white, but they should not not cite you because of it. But unlike citing someone, not citing someone isn’t always a conscious decision. (If I don’t know X’s work, I will not cite X, but I haven’t really decided not to cite X.)
    As I understand it, the idea is that people should ask themselves whether they are (involuntarily) omitting some people’s work because these people happen to be not male, not white, or have/lack other attributes that ought to be irrelevant in citing practices.
    The proposed test is only a way to make you aware of your own blind spot. Once you have been made aware of the work of people you don’t usually read, whether or not to read and cite them should depend on the usual reasons for deciding this (i.e., the content of their papers).

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20. 

    Helen De Cruz

    April 4, 2014

    Hi Mohan: Thanks – There are different standards of citation in different fields. For instance, when I recently wrote a paper with a developmental psychologist, I was rather taken aback that about 1/3 of our paper was taken up by references. I was wondering if we need them all, but the practice in that field is to cite rather exhaustively whomever has contributed to a particular field or topic of study (so that’s how you end up with a list of 5 or more citations for one claim). Philosophers can be more selective.
    I don’t think we need to engage with work that we dislike, but if, say, you’re writing on epistemic luck and raise a problem it’s a good idea to cite people who have worked on the problem even if one doesn’t like their take on it.
    The Bechdel test might help one to see if one has simply overlooked some authors because of various implicit biases. The one I propose – for female authors – is easy, but indeed, authors who aren’t white are similarly subject to biases. So are authors of small institutions, authors who are in more teaching-oriented positions, or authors who haven’t (yet) secured a tenureline or tenured position. In general, the citation practices in philosophy seem geared towards citing bigname philosophers from major research-intensive universities, and most of these people are white males.
    So I would say, yes, if one refrains from citing someone because one doesn’t like their work, it’s a good idea to reconsider because there may be many factors (additional to not liking their work) that make one not cite them. I must confess I sometimes cite papers that I don’t really like but that I know are very influential in the field of the paper I’m writing in, and so I know if I don’t cite them, referees will think that I don’t know the field well (why didn’t author cite X, such a landmark paper in the field?) So I cite them. This sort of reasoning, I guess, explains the Matthew effect in citation practices, and in that context, reconsidering to cite someone one doesn’t want to cite because one doesn’t like their work might be a good idea.

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21. 

    Sara L. Uckelman

    April 4, 2014

    I think one of the problems that trying to adapt the Bechdel test from movies to philosophy papers is that writers of movie scripts often have few constraints with regard to potential characters: There’s little to stop them from creating characters and plot lines which would make their movie pass the test. But someone writing a philosophy paper is constrained by what was gone before: I couldn’t pass the philosophy Bechdel test by, e.g., creating a new female author with papers that I could cite. I’m constrained to cite only real papers by real people that have previously been published (or at least circulated). Thus, it would be significantly harder to pass the philosophy Bechdel test than the movie Bechdel test, for reasons that are unrelated to the creative processes of the author of either the paper or the script.

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22. 

    Helen De Cruz

    April 4, 2014

    This is true, and also the reason why the test would not be normative in the sense that there might be many reasons not to conform to the 3 criteria (e.g., it could be a work in history of philosophy, there could be very few women working on the topic etc). But on the whole, I think it’s an interesting test to subject one’s own papers to. I tried two recent papers of my own: one just published, which barely passes the test (it mentions and briefly discusses Nancey Murphy and 2 other female authors, but those other 2 aren’t philosophers), and another, under review, which mentions Sharon Street and several female authors from psychology. In general, going over my past papers, I’ve noticed that my citations to philosophers are mainly to male authors, but that my citations to psychologists (usually a fair portion of citations) have a much better gender balance, usually 1/3 or 1/2. It does say something the maleness of philosophy – both in terms of numbers and in terms of prominence or, as I’ve mentioned in an earlier comment, the sense that one must cite (mainly male authors) in order to placate referees.

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23. 

    Marilyn Wann

    April 4, 2014

    Call it the Hypatia Test?

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24. 

    Mohan Matthen

    April 4, 2014

    Sylvia, that’s a great answer, but there are those who might think it too weak, and they might use the Bechdel test differently. I don’t like citing people whose work I consider shoddy or motivated by something other than truth-seeking. But what if some of these are women. Can I be sure that I am not employing an implicit bias? Maybe an unduly high proportion of the people I disparage in this way are women. Similarly, people may not refrain from citing me because I am not white. But what if their unduly low opinion of my work is similarly due to an implicit bias against non-white people? To avoid such quandaries, some think that one should make sure one passes the Bechdel test, and thus answer the first and third of my questions positively, but not the second. (Similar arguments can be found in the Gendered Conference Campaign.) I am not sure what you would think of this approach, but I think that whatever the initial merits of affirmative citation practices may be, it’ll lead to bad results in this end.

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25. 

    Mohan Matthen

    April 4, 2014

    Hi Helen, I wasn’t so much thinking of not citing people whose views I don’t like, or people I don’t like personally, but of not citing those who make a shoddy or a show-offy or (what I take to be) a dishonest case for their views. Some such people are women, and I sometimes withhold a citation, even a combative one. I could improve my Bechdel rating by changing my practice, but I am loath to do that.

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26. 

    r

    April 4, 2014

    I agree with your concerns @24 and 5, Mohan–namely, I think they’re concerning and the ultimate upshot is one that reasonable people can disagree on–but I think it’s also important to note that the modest claim is one that we still seem to all agree on: namely, that one can use some variant of the Bechdel test not as a requirement but as a useful flag and an opportunity to jog one’s unreflective habits.

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27. 

    Roberta L. Millstein

    April 4, 2014

    Really great discussion here — great idea, Helen!
    There’s been a lot of focus on the Bechdel test (the De Cruz test?) for individual papers, which I think is productive — it gets us to think about who we might be citing and discussing but aren’t. But I think we should also think about it for the field as a whole. That is, where there might be good reason for some (few) papers to fail the Bechdel test, there should not be widespread failure of the Bechdel test. I take that to be much of the sprit of the original Bechdel test — not to berate each and every failure, but to show just how many failures there are.

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28. 

    Roberta L. Millstein

    April 5, 2014

    I just thought of another way the Bechdel/De Cruz test could change our practices — it should be something we think about when we referee. That is, we should consider whether the author of the paper could and should be citing the relevant work of women or other underrepresented people, and put those specific suggestions in the reviewer comments.

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29. 

    Helen De Cruz

    April 5, 2014

    I think that’s a great idea! I recently refereed a course book for an intro to philosophy of religion course, where I noticed that for one of the sample chapters, the authors failed to mention any female authors (even though that particular field has several female scholars, several of which more prominent than the male scholars reviewed in that chapter), I pointed this out to the authors, but that was because it was such a glaring omission. I haven’t routinely paid attention to it when refereeing.

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30. 

    Eugene Marshall

    April 6, 2014

    This idea can also be used when devising a syllabus. I suggested a Bechdel Test for philosophy syllabuses in this article, which came out in Teaching Philosophy last month:
    http://www.pdcnet.org/pdc/bvdb.nsf/purchase?openform&fp=teachphil&id=teachphil_2013_0999_12_12_10

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31. 

    Quayshawn Spencer

    April 7, 2014

    This is a clever idea, but like the gendered campaign initiative, it seems to be a distraction from the deeper underlying problem, which is the lack of gender diversity in philosophy. If there were adequate gender diversity in philosophy, this wouldn’t be an issue. Also, it’s not an issue in philosophical subfields that are adequately gender diverse. For example, in addition to being a philosopher of science, I’m a philosopher of race, and I don’t have to think about who I cite because the gender diversity in philosophy of race is good enough to guarantee that if you’re doing high-quality work in the field, you will have to engage with female philosophers. For instance, Naomi Zack, not Anthony Appiah, is the highest cited living philosopher of race. Also, I don’t know how you could do high quality work in the field without citing Linda Alcoff or Sally Haslanger. So, I suggest we get the gender diversity into philosophy and distributed better across philosophy instead of focusing on these short-term projects.

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32. 

    Helen De Cruz

    April 8, 2014

    It would definitely be a good idea to get more diversity in some areas of philosophy. Also: I would not say that the proposed test or the GCC are “short-term projects”. I think the GCC is effective as a social mechanism to make conference organizers reflect on whom they’re inviting, and the Bechdel philosophy paper test is a good personal rule of thumb to check whether for oneself whether one has not omitted a female philosopher whose work is worth mentioning in one’s paper.
    Suppose you work in metaphysics or epistemology you could very well build an entire publication record (not saying anyone does this, but that it’s possible) without citing a single female philosopher. Is this because there aren’t enough quality female epistemologists or metaphysicians? Or, is it, as the Healey data suggest, that citation practices are subconsciously skewed towards men? This is not unique to philosophy, there are other studies showing that papers where a woman is first author are cited less. The robustness of this phenomenon leads me to think that there are implicit biases that make people less think about women contributors to their field when they write (or in the case of the GCC and what it is reacting against) when they invite a lineup of speakers.
    So I agree about getting more diversity, but disagree about the purported unimportance of what you term short-term projects. If I’m a female philosophy major, deciding what to study for my graduate degree, and I notice that all papers in my chosen field cite predominantly or almost exclusively men? Will I feel encouraged or discouraged to study this field? Or rather, would I like to focus on a field where the recognized top contributors are women? It seems to me not implausible that this plays a role when students decide to take up a field of study (I remember a developmental psychologist saying, “When deciding to study developmental psychology I was particularly guided by the fact that there are so many prominent women in this field, so I thought, if I want to make a successful career, I could choose this field”. In this way, better citation practices and better representation of women at conferences could increase the field’s long-term diversity.

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33. 

    m

    April 8, 2014

    What about a quality test? Wouldn’t that be much more useful?

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34. 

    m

    April 8, 2014

    „It would definitely be a good idea to get more diversity in some areas of $thing.“
    People keep stating this but never care to explain why. It’s like a verbal tick, unchallenged.

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