2

I came across this blog post about how philosophy has lagged behind other disciplines when it comes to gender parity and diversity.

It then struck me that I've always assumed that the vast majority of contributors to the Philosophy SE are male.

Is that correct? And if so why is it the case? Is it something about philosophy in general or something about the SE (I get the feeling that most SE are male dominated, not just the philosophy one)?

8
  • 1
    [For the discipline generally:] it's the sexism, Spock :)
    – Joseph Weissman Mod
    Mar 29 '17 at 13:08
  • 1
    This sort of thing for instance insidehighered.com/news/2017/03/24/…
    – Joseph Weissman Mod
    Mar 29 '17 at 13:11
  • 2
    @JosephWeissman I was about to bring up the Searle allegations, but then I thought that it would cloud the issue. Part of my question is whether the Phil SE is mirroring philosophy in general or whether there is something SE specific going on. On a side note, a 3000$ stipend for a grad student? When did phil profs, even super famous ones like Searle, start sitting on that kind of money?!?!?!?!
    – Alexander S King
    Mar 29 '17 at 13:18
  • Yeah, sorry for dragging this straight there... :/
    – Joseph Weissman Mod
    Mar 29 '17 at 14:05
  • 4
    cough one mod is a woman, and I'm trying to be more active
    – commando
    Mar 29 '17 at 18:57
  • 3
    also, this isn't scientific but I've got the impression that participating in online forums tends to skew male so we don't have that going for us
    – commando
    Mar 29 '17 at 19:03
  • @commando "impression that participating in online forums tends to skew male" -- in the 1980s that would have been explained by the fact that all of IT was male dominated, but now that everyone has access to computers, you'd think that that would have changed.
    – Alexander S King
    Mar 29 '17 at 20:51
  • 1
    @AlexanderSKing I sure would have hoped, but even today so much of the tech industry is male dominated (I could point to any number of recent articles lamenting the problem) and it also seems like an issue of socialization. There's a lot of power attached to societal perceptions of this or that as "for boys" or "for girls" and I'm confident that most things to do with computers fall in the former.
    – commando
    Mar 29 '17 at 20:53

You must log in to answer this question.

Browse other questions tagged .