Stalled Progress for Women Who Think

Turns out the New Yorker's Shouts and Murmurs isn't the only place women aren't being published. Just came upon this uplifting little tidbit, via Inside Higher Ed, about a paper by MIT philosophy professor Sally Haslanger on the limits of progress for women in philosophy. The paper won’t appear until next year, in the journal Hypatia, but Haslanger posted a version of it online and it's attracting considerable attention. (Total non sequitor: I will always have a soft spot for Hypatia. They published my first academic article, as part of their special "third wave feminism" issue back in 1997.)

Here's the scoop:

Haslanger studied the gender breakdowns in the top 20 departments (based on The Philosophical Gourmet Report) and found that the percentage of women in tenure track positions was 18.7 percent, with two departments under 10 percent. She also looked at who published in top philosophy journals for the last five years and found that only 12.36 percent of articles were by women.

As Inside Higher Ed goes on to note, "While Haslanger hasn’t made formal proposals for reform, in her essay and in the interview, she spoke of the importance of ensuring that women receive equal treatment through blind review of journal submissions and that 'efforts ought to be made to make sure women aren’t solo in graduate programs.'”

Interesting discussion going on about it all over at Crooked Timber, an academic group blog I just discovered.