Recently, for the first time, I had lunch in the main campus food court of one of the institutions where I work. These two posterboards were prominently positioned by the entrance/exit. Obviously and intentionally, the boards encouraged folks to think and act in an environmentally conscious manner. However, only slightly less obviously (and one hopes less intentionally) they also telegraphed a rather unsubtle message about gender.

Here are a few relevant features of the two boards:

Near the man’s head is a thought bubble (he immediately looks like a thinker), with nearby encouragement to “Think smart! Think efficient!”
Near the woman’s head is an arrow pointing to her face, with advice on what make-up she should wear.

The man is carrying a newspaper (he looks informed) and a football (he looks active).
The woman is carrying a shopping bag and a coffee mug.

The woman is posed and dressed in a much more obviously sexualized way.

With one exception, every piece of advice surrounding the female figure is about clothing, make-up, shopping, or beverage consumption. (The exception is right at the bottom of the image, almost hidden behind another board, and is about walking wherever possible.) The same is not true of the advice surrounding the male figure.

With lots of help and encouragement from friends and colleagues, I composed and sent an email to the Principal and VC of the university explaining that these boards were sending a damaging message, and that we were doing everyone a disservice by reinforcing stereotypes about gender which are detrimental to (among other things) the academic success of women. I invited the VC, and those involved in the design of these posterboards, to an upcoming public event on implicit bias against women hosted by the research institute where I work.

I received a reply from the VC the next day, saying that although he may not be able to attend the event, he had forwarded my message to one of the Vice Principals who has responsibility for a team looking at gender policy and awareness in the university. I followed up with the Vice Principal in question, who wrote back to me explaining that the posterboards were five years old and she hadn’t seen them before, but that after reading my email she had canvassed opinions and got the posters removed. In fact, they were taken down the day after I sent my original message.

While it’s sad that these boards were around for five years before anything happened, I am heartened by the university’s prompt and positive response to my concerns, and especially by all the goodwill and support that made it so much easier to raise them than it might otherwise have been.

Myself and a number of other women (a mixture of under grads, graduates and staff) very recently started a Women In Philosophy group at the University of Auckland.
Sometimes we just get together to chat, other times to discuss events or initiatives. One member, Tessa, is starting up a women’s reading group, and today we had an ice cream event (sponsored by the department), where we made “we need women in philosophy because” signs, in the style of the “I need feminism because” meme.

For all the photos, go here.

I am a tenured Associate at a mid-sized Canadian university that has a pretty healthy atmosphere. I wish we had more women and people of colour, and I occasionally have to point out my colleagues patriarchal white supremacist feet in their mouths, but they will *listen,* and by and large it’s a collegial and respectful group.

To encourage my philosophy colleagues to make their curricula more inclusive, I have been strategic. I have taken on the much neglected official chore of coordinating and creating discussion in the department around “teaching and learning.” This portfolio gives me independent reason to speak that can’t be dismissed as “feminist griping” or any other sort of partisanship (I am cross-appointed to Women’s Studies). (I hate to presume my colleagues would be so suspicious but I want to be as effective as possible in bypassing their biases in order to make the most of my efforts.)

I have urged my colleagues that due to stereotype threat and implicit bias they are not reaching women students in the way they might. I posted up as many resources as I could find on a “philosophy teaching and learning” site that I created in our teaching web platform (Sakai-based), and I hope to build this site steadily and send out notices periodically about the improvement to the resources.

My efforts have not been completely futile, although the uptake has been somewhat disappointing. Hardly anyone has actually looked at the resources I’ve posted (I can produce reports showing who visits). However, my colleagues do seem to be paying attention to my announcements about the site: two (of around 10) have since shared with me in person their effort to involve more women authors in their course readings (plus one feminist women who discussed it with me in general terms of acceptance).

So why aren’t my colleagues actually looking at the resources I posted that provide rationales for including more readings by women? I like to think this may be because they already accept that more women need to be included in the philosophy curriculum. (Note: I was hired specifically to teach feminism.) However, they get careless, and fall back on what they know, like we all can. They don’t need the rationale, just the reminder and perhaps some direction to appropriate sources.

I may sound naive, or excessively optimistic, but one colleague, J, expressed to me that he appreciated the prompt to make his educational practice consistent with his political (and philosophical) commitments. I continue to build the web resource — and the moral, epistemological, and philosophical pressure that come with the easy availability of relevant resources. I hope and even expect that there will be a gradual shift in the shape of our curriculum, and perhaps in the number of women in our program too.

Today, catching up with my accumulated mail, I have tentatively accepted three invitations to conferences with the following qualification:
” I have signed the “Commitment to gender equity at scholarly conferences” (http://www.gopetition.com/petitions/commitment-to-gender-equity-at-scholarly-conferences.html) and therefore undertaken “to make [my] participation in conferences – whether as an organizer, sponsor, or invited speaker – conditional on the invitation of women and men speakers in a fair and balanced manner.” If you can confirm that this condition is actually to be fulfilled at your conference, I will indeed be very happy and honoured to participate as a keynote speaker. Otherwise, I suggest you use the keynote speaker’s slot I must decline to fill to invite one of our many outstanding women colleagues.”
I am looking forward to see the reactions.

Ruth Chang has sent in this link to the new Rutgers climate survey. Do have a look!

Our department has recently been taking steps to organize our search procedures for tenure-track hires in order to 1) minimize implicit bias in the search processes; 2) give each candidate invited to campus performance conditions that avoid perils such as solo status or stereotype threat inducing situations; and 3) enhance recruiting. While our efforts in this direction are more detailed than can be easily summarized, here is a partial list of the steps we’re taking:

1) Since haste in evaluation increases the risks of implicit bias, we’re protecting search committee members from any additional service where possible and setting earlier deadlines for applications to maximize the time the search committee has for careful review of candidates’ materials.

2) Since uniform application and weighting of clearly established criteria is key to minimizing bias, our search committee will develop a list of criteria for the job and have these ready-to-hand in evaluating applicants’ dossiers. Our search committee and all faculty have also been given basic information about how implicit bias can operate in dossiers (e.g., in letters of recommendation) and will strive to be alert to this in reviewing candidates’ materials.

3) Our Recruiting & Diversity Committee is screening applications for potential triggers to implicit bias and seeking to ensure that any applications with such potential triggers will receive careful consideration (e.g., each getting a second look, keeping criteria ready to hand while these are read, etc.).

4) When our search committee has an initial list of a dozen or so top applicants, we’re creating anonymized versions of these applicants’ writing samples for faculty to review independently of the full non-anonymized dossiers.

5) Since campus visits can bring all sorts of nebulous social factors into play in evaluating applicants, we’re seeking to have a ranked list of candidates before the visits. There may of course be good reasons for re-ordering the candidates’ rankings after the visits, but the initial ranking, based solely on the dossiers, will provide an important stimulus for the department to query just what in the visits has prompted any revised evaluation of the candidates and better guard against inadvertently giving way to any biasing elements produced by the visits.

6) When we invite on campus interviews, we’re having faculty unaffiliated with the search committee ask candidates if they have any special concerns or needs we can accommodate so that any candidates who is, e.g., disabled, pregnant, or nursing is not put at a deficit by a schedule of activity insensitive to her needs.

7) During campus visits, we will have an open interview session in which each candidate will be ask questions from a pre-fixed list. The aim of this is to ensure uniformity and consistency in both what the candidates are asked to address and in what we then use in evaluating them. We’ll take whatever steps our current departmental demographics allow to protect candidates in these interviews from solo status. Among the questions all candidates will be asked will be at least one regarding diverse student populations and the recruiting and retention of diverse students in the discipline.

8) We’ll be routinely giving all candidates our department and university family leave policies, and trying to ensure that our presentation of these does look routine so that, e.g., women candidates will not feel specially singled out to receive this information.

9) We’re making sure that all job talks are carefully moderated so that tone and pacing in the Q & A in particular is conducive to candidates’ good performance.

10) For meals and such with candidates, we’re making sure to remind all involved about what conversational subjects are verboten. We’re likewise keeping attendance at such events relatively low so that candidates are not overwhelmed.

11) After campus visits, we’ll be carefully reviewing dossiers again, seeking to keep these the principal body of data in the search so that nebulous social elements of the campus visits don’t overwhelm evaluation.

12) After the campus visits, we’ll seek feedback from graduate students involved in elements of the campus visits with special attention to any red flags that might indicate a candidate will not be effective in department efforts to recruit and retain a diverse student population.

Here at the Center for Philosophy of Religion at Notre Dame, we see the improvement of the climate for women in the discipline as integral not only to fulfilling our moral duty as human beings, but also to our mission to promote dialogue and the fullest development of scholarship within the sub-discipline. To that end, here are a few things we’ve been doing:
1. This past spring, we invited Christina Van Dyke to present her paper, “Don’t Get Your Panties in a Bunch: The Dilemma of Addressing the Absence of Women in the Philosophy of Religion,” at our weekly discussion group. In addition to inviting our regular research fellows, visitors, and discussion participants, we also invited the whole philosophy department to come, listen, and participate in the discussion.
2. When organizing conferences, we make sure to uphold the values of the Gendered Conference Campaign.
3. We maintain a list of women working in Philosophy of Religion, available under the “Resources” page on our website, so that others organizing conferences in Philosophy of Religion can do their best to uphold the values of the Gendered Conference Campaign as well.
4. We work to create a genuinely engaged, respectful, and inclusive community of scholars through the work of the Center—and take seriously any and all suggestions from our community members as to how we can best accomplish these goals.

A philosopher seeks discussion of the following:

The [Leiter Reports post] on women’s experiences, awful as they are, doesn’t address a related issue, namely the degree to which women in academe are abused by *students.*  A former colleague of mine was subjected to such abuse from the moment of her on campus interview for the position. That abuse came from a graduate student, and it was outrageous. But then this same colleague was verbally abused and taunted, repeatedly, by male students in her classes, over a period of some years.  I’m happy to say that these students did not get away with this behavior; this former colleague is one tough person who would not idly suffer that type of abuse from students.  But why should she have been the subject of this in the first place?

Maybe you and your many readers would have comments on this aspect of women’s academic experience?

Although relatively young, the Minorities and Philosophy working group (MAP for short) at Yale University has already seen three stages of development.

It was born in Fall 2010 as Women and Philosophy working group. This was a group of female graduate students interested in addressing the issue of the dearth of women in philosophy, and the related issues of sexual discrimination and sexual harassment in academia, that had been brought to the fore by your sister-blog (“What is it like to be a woman in philosophy?”). The formation of the group was supported from the very beginning by Prof. Tamar Gendler, chair of the department.

During the first meeting of Women and Philosophy, which included both undergraduate and graduate female students, the participants voted to open the working group to male participants. The decision was taken after weighing considerations for and against a co-ed group. Among the reasons against, there was the interest in creating a friendly and welcoming place for women in a mostly male environment, along the lines of similar initiatives (see for instance the Women Faculty Forum Lunches at Yale). Among the reasons for, there was the shared conviction that in order to improve such an environment it was fundamental to include men in the dialogue, and to send the message that questions of gender should be a matter of attention of a department (and a profession) as a whole.

The group therefore started its activities under the name of Gender and Philosophy in February 2011, with a talk by Ruth Barcan Marcus titled “Women in Philosophy: Past, Present and Future”. It was followed by three other talks, all well-attended by women and men alike, and by faculty, graduates and undergraduates alike.

In 2011-2012 GAP held eight meetings, four per semester, which consisted of 2 reading groups and 6 talks from internal and external speakers.

In both years of activity, we received organizational support from the Women Faculty Forum at Yale, which co-sponsored some of the events, and financial support from both the university (namely the Dean’s Fund for Research Workshops of the Graduate School) and the department.

At the end of its second year, GAP evolved into MAP, Minorities and Philosophy, after the decision to expand the scope to issues concerning any minority issues in philosophy. Starting from this school year, we plan to host talks addressing: a) the minority issues in the profession, b) theoretical issues regarding philosophy of gender, race, sexual orientation, disability, etc., and c) philosophy done from minority perspectives.

The group maintains its characteristic openness in content and format. With regard to the latter, so far we have had both informal talks with extended discussion, and reading groups, and we are looking into the possibility of a lecture series and workshops of a more practical character (for instance, workshops on communication techniques). With regard to the former, we believe that addressing the minority gap in philosophy requires a multi-focused strategy.

On the one hand, it is necessary to diagnose the nature of the problem and its causes. One way to do this is to ask questions from the internal perspective of philosophy and its specific characteristics (for instance, is there anything in philosophy that is uniquely responsible for the professional and academic disadvantage of minority groups?). Another way is to look at analogous issues in other disciplines to diagnose fundamental problems, and ideally, offer solutions.

On the other hand, it is important to show that philosophy can be done in many ways. One way to make philosophy friendlier to women and other minorities is to make philosophy more about women and other minorities – to discuss issues in feminist philosophy, philosophy of race, gender, sexual orientation, disability, and so forth. Additionally, it is also important to have speakers who are members of minority groups, independently of what their philosophical interests are. We want to address the minority gap by giving prominence to the minority members themselves.

Moving from GAP to MAP is not just a name change but a sign of optimism: we really hope we can contribute to finding the paths to fill the gaps in our profession.

Sara Protasi
on behalf of
the MAP organizers
at Yale University

Julia von Bodelschwingh (graduate student)
Nathanael Deraney (undegraduate student)
Eric Guindon (graduate student)
Yena Lee (undergraduate student, graduated 2012)
Cameron McCulloch (undegraduate student)
Sara Protasi (graduate student)
Daniel Putnam (graduate student)