Being a woman in (mathematical) philosophy MCMP – Ethics and Value Theory

Catarina Dutilh Novaes (Groningen) gives a talk at the MCMP Colloquium (15 May, 2013) titled "Being a woman in (mathematical) philosophy". Abstract: Why are there so few women in philosophy, and in technical areas such as mathematical philosophy in particular? Philosophy has the worst gender balance of all fields in the humanities, at around 16%-25% worldwide. The presence of women in philosophy is comparable to engineering and physics; it is worse than in mathematics. Is this a problem? And if it is, what can be done about it? What is it like, being a woman in (mathematical) philosophy? In my talk, I discuss some unconscious psychological phenomena that are now thought to greatly contribute to the phenomenon of poor gender balance in several professional spheres, academia in particular. I will focus especially on implicit biases and stereotype threat, two phenomena widely documented by the literature in social psychology, and how they impact the position of women and other under-represented groups in academia, in philosophy in particular. Many points can be generalized to other dimensions of exclusion such as race/ethnicity, class, sexual orientation etc., but in this talk I will focus predominantly on the issue of gender imbalance. I will also discuss reasons why everyone should be concerned by this situation (i.e. not only the members of the under-represented groups themselves), as well as practical measures that may help improve the position of women in philosophy and elsewhere in academia.