What drives women away from philosophy? Some anecdotal speculation

(*update: comments are closed)

There are a number of discussions going on right now about what drives so many women away from philosophy.  Among the explanations offered are:

• Chilly/masculine climates
• Sexual harrassment
• Implicit associations of philosophy with masculinity
• The content of philosophy itself
• The rampant idea in philosophy that M&E are "real philosophy" whereas areas more attractive to women and other historically underrepresented minorities (e.g. feminist philosophy, critical race theory, etc.) are "not real philosophy"

I think there's probably some truth to all of these explanations -- yet none of them entirely jibe with my (admittedly anecdotal) experience with female students.  As several people point out in comments over at the Smoker, it's well-known that females tend to leave philosophy very early on as undergraduates -- basically, somewhere between intro classes and medium-level undergraduate courses.  This is, obviously, very peculiar -- and I'd like to speculate on the basis of my experience why it occurs.

My feeling is that female students tend to find common philosophical methods to be alienating. What, after all, are our methods? Let's go all the way back to Socrates in The Republic. Socrates goes through an entire project of developing a hypothetical just city. He talks about workers, guardians, etc. It's all abstraction -- and, as we all know, this does seem to be a problematic feature of his account. He's talking about workers and guardians almost entirely in the abstract, largely ignoring what real people are like, and what sorts of concerns they might have as people. There's just no heart to any of it.

Now turn to something that one might expect female students to tend to find attractive (but in my experience they don't): Judith Thompson's article on abortion, with the whole violinist case. In my experience, female undergraduates -- as much as they like the idea of freedom of choice -- often find the argument itself very alienating, even rather horrifying. There's just so little heart in it. It's mostly about whether one has a right to let a poor violinist die. As compelling as the argument is, it also seems rather...heartless.

Third, consider "core" areas of analytic philosophy: metaphysics and epistemology. My experience here is that female students tend to find the debates in these areas as overly "academic" -- as silly games that their male peers tend to find totally oddly fascinating. Indeed, it is always very striking to me that the moment I begin doing anything M&E in my intro courses, the male students largely seem to come alive whereas the females tend to have this look of "my goodness, do people really waste their time on this!?" 

Now, I don't mean to affirm anything like the naive -- and rather offensive -- view that men are "thinkers" and women "feelers."  My claim is different. It seems to me that my female students are -- for whatever reason -- put off by their perception that philosophy has no feeling in it. This isn't to say, in any way, that men are "thinkers" and women "feelers." If anything, it is to suggest that female students (perhaps because of their better upbringing?) tend to better balance analytical thinking and feeling than male undergraduate students -- and this too coheres with my experience. It shocks me when my male students defend (as they too often do) what strike me as overly abstract and rather heartless positions, particularly in ethics and political philosophy (where, again, male students in my experience tend to focus on emotionally cold assertions about rights, and indeed, it seems more and more male students find attractive the very extreme libertarian position that no one ever has a right to expect anything from anyone).

Anyway, these are just some speculations based on my experience.  My experience -- and again, it is only anecdotal -- is that female students tend to be alienated by the very way that philosophers go about answering questions. It's not just about content or perceived masculinity. It is about sapping philosophy of almost all feeling whatsoever.  Finally, quite aside from the issue of whether this is what drives women away, this seems to me an important issue in its own right. Why, when feelings are so much a part of what makes us human -- and what separates us from psychopaths -- does so much philosophy (particularly moral and political philosophy) proceed in such an obviously "cold" way: with abstract models like the state of nature or Rawls' original position, as opposed to the much more embodied perspectives of feminist epistemology, etc.? 

Comments

[Andy Stephenson]

Hi Marcus

I know you say that you don't say in any way that men are thinkers and women are feelers, but, well, you kind of do say that. You don't go to extremes (who does?!), you give us a spectrum, but saying that women are more evenly balanced surely entails that they are more feely than those who are less evenly balanced towards being thinky.

That's my first point. It seems to me, in the nicest way possible, you just are peddling a 'naive', 'offense' (to both women and men) stereotype. Now I'll peddle a different stereotype, one that's not naive (properly understood) or offense but is true.

Philosophy is done in a cold way because that's the way that truth lies, because the cold way is the scientific way.

Like I said, this needs to be properly understood. It certainly doesn't mean that philosophy (and especially philosophy teaching) needs to be boring or technical. Nor does it deny that feelings are a huge part of what makes us human, and as such, may well have a crucial place in the story, be it as an object of study or as a fact that grounds a theory of ethics - forgetting that humans are emotional would be as bad as forgetting that humans are rational.

[Robert Seddon]

Plato's Republic is an abstract oddity even compared to many later utopian texts written by men, such as More's or Bacon's, so I'm hesitant to take it as exemplary of any gendered tendency. (Thompson's violinist case, on the other hand, arguably suffers from an excess of narrative colour...)

Have you tried actively putting into question what roles abstract reason should and shouldn't play in philosophy and the examined life? I used to have first year students read Langton's 'Duty and Desolation' before their first seminar on Kant's ethics, and it always got a vigorous reaction from both sexes.

[Marcus Arvan]

Andy: with respect, there is an enormous difference between the generalization that men are thinkers and women are feelers -- a generalization that plays into a offensive, oppressive stereotype that women are hysterical and unable to think dispassionately -- and the *observation* that many of my female students seem turned off by the fact that contemporay western analytic philosophy seems almost *entirely* stripped of emotion. I do not see what is offensive about that, though I am willing to listen if indeed it is.

What bothers me more is your assertion that "philosophy is cold because that is where the truth lies.". This bothers me because (A) I think it is patently false, (B) it is what feminist philosophers and other derogated sub disciplines have been denying for years, and (C) it is precisely the attitude that, in my experience, *rightly* drives my female students away from philosophy.

You say outright that the truth is to be found through dispassionate inquiry. The problem is -- or so I and many feminists think -- that this is patently false in ethical contexts. What separates us -- the moral community -- from psychopaths is our abilties to feel empathy, guilt and remorse. Psychopaths, because they lack these abilities, fail to understand basic moral concepts. They see *nothing* wrong with murdering people. But murdering people is wrong. That's the truth. So emotion is necessary for understanding certain truths properly -- and so too, feminists say, are the perspectives of women: what women *feel* in response to situations and social structures that men "see nothing wrong with."

I don't mean to sound hostile (keeping this blog a friendly place is a top priority). However, I do think it is important to strongly express my conviction that the attitude that "dispassion in the key to truth" is (A) a widespread view that is (B) probably false that (C) predictably leads to the derogation of "feely", embodied areas of philosophy like feminism and critical race theory, that finally (D) predictably, and sadly, turns many women, etc. against philosophy so early on.

[Marcus Arvan]

Hi Robert: thanks for the illuminating comment. Yes, I often make it a point in my ethics courses to talk about these issues, especially the importance of lived, embodied moral experience (for example, how it's easier for us to think in dehumanizing ways when we are at a distance as opposed to when we experience things directly). I use the example of how images from the Vietnam war dramatically changed moral opinions about the war in the US because, for the first time, people were *seeing* the suffering. I also tend to show videos of implicit racism and sexism, as well as videos of animals being slaughtered, when we discuss things like affirmative action and animal rights -- so that, again, I'm not just engaging their analytical faculties, but their emotional ones as well (I consistently find that it's amazing how this changes things in the classroom. For example, students who are initially disinclined to accept any argument in favor of affirmative action or against eating animals are often much more receptive to such arguments after their emotions are engaged via these moral experiences).
Here's another case that just popped into my head, and which also, I think, pertains to my above reply to Andy. I was teaching Plato's Phaedo the other day, and three different females in the class immediately brought up how Soctates didn't seem to give a damn about his weeping wife, Xanthippe, or his children. Not a single male brought it up. To the contrary, many of them were quite impressed by how placidly Socrates met his death. On the flip side, the aforementioned young women in my class thought Socrates was an absolute *monster* for evidently caring so little for his wife (who, as as the dialogue tells the story, Socrates has whisked away so he doesn't have to be disturbed by her wailing, so he can keep talking calmly, and dispassionately, about philosophy with a bunch of men).

[elisa freschi]

Hi Marcus, and thanks for discussing the topic in a quiet and attentive way.
A few preliminary comments:

1. What you lament does not regard only philosophy: mathematics, textual criticism, physics, engineering,…you just have to name a subject to find an in-balance between students and academic staff. Please notice that this lack of balance is apparent also in the case of subjects which are typically "for women", such as history of art, performative arts, and foreign languages. Even in these cases, the ratio of men to women among academic staff is quite different than the ratio among undergraduate students.

2. I understand that this is not your current focus, but I think that contextual factors play a major role in the lack of women studying philosophy (and so on) after the first year(s). As hinted at in the discussion to Trevor Hedberg's Balance Series, women are much more affected by the birth of their children, possible illnesses among their closer relatives and so on. I do not think that this is genetically determined, but culture determines them in this direction.

3. I liked your answer to Andy concerning the concept of "truth", but I think he has a point when he criticises you. Also in my opinion you risk to oversimplify, thinking that being a man or a woman is more important than, say, having read more novels than scientific literature, when it comes to the evaluation of feelings. Thanks God, many men are much more "emotionally intelligent" than most women, and this just proves that one's identity is multisided. You did not state the opposite, but I think you might have underestimated this point.

This being said, I tend to think that no. 2 (cultural context) is the key for the low presence of women in philosophy departments, but even if it were so it would be beneficial for all if one could rethink of feminist philosophy or gender studies as not regarding a "special class" of human beings, but as highlighting very general and important concerns which had been overlooked for cultural reasons, but need not to. In this sense, the fact that the audience of gender studies lectures is usually made of almost exclusively women means that men philosophers are missing a great opportunity to look at the world from a different perspective. And is not this what philosophy is about?

[Russell Terman]

Let's be blunt here. Women are underrepresented in philosophy at least in part because they have a narrower distribution of IQ and philosophy is intellectually a demanding field. Of course, factors like sexism, alienating methods, motherhood, etc. likely apply. But as you note, women tend to leave philosophy early on; and the most parsimonious explanation for that is their narrower distribution of IQ. It may also be a lack of interest due to some factor common throughout STEM majors as well, and methodology is a good candidate for such a factor.

Russell

[Marcus Arvan]

Russell: while we're being blunt, let's look at the facts. The facts about IQ and sex are very unclear. Some studies indicated a difference in IQ variance, others don't -- and even those that do only indicate a *very* small difference in variance, not nearly enough to account for the nearly 10:1 ratio of men to women in philosophy. Furthermore, college age women consistently show higher IQs than males of the same age -- so IQs can't explain why so many women leave philosophy their freshman or sophomore years. Anyway, back to IQ tests: some indicate a higher average IQs for men, some do for women. Some studies indicate that men are better at math and science, but increasingly many studies show that, to the contrary, women are. And many studies show absolutely no difference between g-factor scores ("general intelligence"). The facts, in other words, are *totally unclear*, and to the extent we know the facts, they are completely insufficient to explain either why (A) the ratio of men to women in philosophy are so out of whack, or (B) why women leave the discipline so early on. So let me be blunt: the most parsimonious explanation is that you are cherry-picking your "facts."

[Marcus Arvan]

Note to everyone: I am going to head off this line of discussion. A safe and supportive blog -- which this blog is intended to be -- is not the place to air theories that women avoid philosophy because they lack the intellectual wherewithal to cut it. There are, I suppose, places to discuss hypotheses like this. This place is not it.

[Russell Terman]

I understand why you would not want this hypothesis discussed. But I think you do nobody any favors by inviting people to discuss the topic, then cutting off discussion of the most promising hypothesis. I also think you owe me a chance to respond to your allegation of intellectual dishonesty.

I have not advocated a difference in the MEANS of men and women with regard to g, only in VARIABILITY. As you note, studies regarding mean differences are quite contradictory (and moreover not my field of expertise).That said, I think the preponderance of evidence favors the existence of sex differences in variability.

Jensen (1998; The g factor) concluded that there existed a significant difference in IQ variance, but not in g variance. (No lack of g variance is corroborated by the lack of variance differences in the Progressive matrices, the most g-loaded treat.) However, components of IQ other than g (e.g., first order factors) probably still have a causal impact on performance in philosophy. The Weschler is a less pure measure of g than the Raven's but a better predictor of real world criteria, likely because the non-g factors that the Raven's excludes have some bearing on real world accomplishment.

The following article summarizes two studies in sex differences. One study found a mean difference but no SD difference (using the Progressive Matrices––see above, and the other found the opposite. However, the study finding a mean difference used a more representative sample. (That said, it was made up of children and adolescents and therefore may have given a slightly skewed estimate of adult scores. But any bias would probably be in favor of women, as children's IQs are known to be more malleable to environmental influences, and women's exposure to IQ-lowering environmental influences [e.g., systematic exclusion from cognitively challenging classes] probably varies as a function of their IQs: high-IQ people [and high-IQ communities and schools] are less likely to hold sexist views.)

http://www.iqcomparisonsite.com/sexdifferences.aspx

Finally, see this article on sex differences among mathematical prodigies, which reports a decline in the ratio of males to females––but a robust and significant ratio nevertheless.

http://www.tip.duke.edu/about/research/intelligence_article.pdf

Finally, see Pinker's response to the 2007 Edge.org question:

http://www.edge.org/q2006/q06_3.html#pinker

Therefore, studies seem to indicate three things.
1. g variability does not differ between sexes.
2. Variability in non-g factors does differ.
3. Sex differences are not wholly innate, and may not be innate at all. This last is NOT mutually exclusive to my hypothesis! Even an environmentally caused difference may have significant ramifications. That said, the study above reported a sudden drop in the M-F ratio in the first five years of the 1980s and no drop thereafter, suggesting that perhaps those years included some change in educational policy that lowered M-F variability differences to their genetic lower bound. After all, post-1985 years were marked by extensive attempts to reduce sexism in the educational system. Once more, though, the geneticity of sex differences is ancillary to my hypothesis.

Moreover, I think you do everyone in this field a tremendous disservice by refusing to let this hypothesis be discussed because it is not "safe" or "supportive." Why do you have to pretend that readers are so thin-skinned they can't handle this discussion? Why not simply let both sides present their evidence? After all, isn't philosophy about challenging one's preconceptions? To my way of thinking, external-world skepticism, panexperientialism, and even MWI are far more unsettling and disturbing than a well-supported remark about sex differences. At the very, very least, it is a plausible hypothesis: just as plausible as any other hypothesis that you discussed. I think that my presentation has been thorough, and it would be dishonest to refuse to publish it.

[Russell Terman]

Also, I never said that differences in IQ variability were enough, *per se*, to explain sex differences in philosophy. I explicitly said that wasn't true:

"Women are underrepresented in philosophy *at least in part* because they have a narrower distribution of IQ and philosophy is intellectually a demanding field. Of course, factors like sexism, alienating methods, motherhood, etc. likely apply."

College women do not show higher IQs than their male counterparts, either. Even Flynn, quite the environmentalist, discusses this in his new book; he acknowledges that men in college in the past have generally shown higher IQs than women (though this may have changed in recent years, it was true throughout most of the past and quite possibly most of your teaching career). However, he concludes that unrepresentative samples explain this phenomenon and that in reality there is no sex differences. (I agree with him here; as I said, I do not think that any conclusion about sex differences in IQ *means* can be drawn, only *distributions.*)

[elisa freschi]

Hi Russell,

I am not in a position to discuss the statistic data (and having worked on the epistemology of testimony, I do not think that statistic data would tell us any absolute, subject-independent truth). However, let us admit that women's results are on an average worse than men's ones. I agree with you that it is quite unlikely to imagine a genetical explanation for this and that a cultural explanation (such as centuries of educational appraoches telling women that they are not even half as good as their male colleagues —centuries which still heavily influence the education we all received at home in our first years—, or the fact that women have been admitted in many universities only in the last decades, or the fact that they were not even considered mature to vote…) is a much more viable explanation.
Now, are we sure that we want to culturally exclude half the population from our field?

I know, we already exclude other subgroups, but for good reasons. For instance, we tend to discourage racist thinkers to become philosophers, or might exclude intellectually impaired students from Academia in general and philosophy in particular. But in the case of women, this exclusion is at the expenses of philosophy itself, since a priori they would be able to contribute validly to its development and are only excluded due to cultural reasons. Should not we take this problem at heart? After all, we care for our discipline, don't we? Would not we care if we knew that people whose surnames start with, e.g., letters A to L are strongly discouraged to study philosophy? Would not we think that we are loosing our future Kants and Hegels and that we need to do something against that?

[Marcus Arvan]

Russell: I do not have time to reply to all of your points. However, I will say a few things:

(A) The facts you give still don't explain at all why women tend to leave the field when they do (as undergraduates). As you note, at this stage of human development the facts are very unclear. Your claims about variance would at most explain why philosophical *prodigies* (e.g. Kripke) have tended to be male.

(B) As someone who has been teaching philosophy for over a decade, I will say that the hypothesis that women leave the field because it is "intellectually demanding" does not sit well at all with my experience. I, for one, have *not* found young male students to be better at philosophy than females, and I expect most philosophy instructors would agree.

Which brings me to,

(C) You are right that philosophy is about questioning preconceptions. But that is not what this blog is about. This blog is intended to be a safe and supportive place for early-career philosophers to discuss their lives, careers, and work. It is not primarily your empirical claims that I take issue with. It is your decision to air what I take to be an offensive inference -- one that I worry threatens to turn this thread into an angry, unwelcome place (not unreasonably, I think, given the nasty direction that a similar discussion over at the Smoker has taken).

Be that as it may, your defense of its discussion seems reasonable to me. I do not want to assume that our readers are too thin-skinned to discuss the issue. I will, however, take care to ensure that the thread does not devolve into an aggressive shouting match. Fair?

[Kate Manne]

I suspect that one of the things that drives women from philosophy is their sense - evinced by "blunt" comments such as Russell's - that their intrinsic aptitude for the subject matter is a perennial topic for discussion. Walking into a philosophy classroom and knowing that (a) you'll generally be in the minority, and (b) there is active speculation about the aptitude of "your kind" for philosophy is a great recipe for stereotype threat. This article is a good starting place for thinking about the phenomenon: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10463280340000072#preview

[Russell Terman]

Elisa, I think you're misunderstanding me. I never said that a genetic explanation was "unlikely," only that it is uncertain, and that in any event the geneticity of the gap does not impact its real-world consequences. Also, I never said that the status quo should be maintained. Suppose for the sake of argument that the gap is entirely caused by systematic exclusion of women from cognitively demanding classes. In that case, I agree that that is a problem and that some action ought to be taken. However, it is an error to assume that underrepresentation of women in philosophy is due to factors other than aptitude. Real differences in aptitude may well be involved.

[Christopher Stephens]

One problem with Russell's explanation - in my intro to phil classes, female students do as well (or slightly better) on average than male students (with just as many getting "As") - so its hard to see why differences in the extremes would discourage females from majoring in phil. They seem to be doing just as well in the classes. Also true among the phil majors here. So I'd be surprised if differences in aptitude play any role.

I'd be interested if there were more general statistics about performance breakdown by gender in intro to phil classes. But the data I'm familiar with say they're doing as well or slightly better.

[Eugene Marshall]

@Russell Terman, regarding your comment at 10/31/2012 at 08:56 PM:

The obvious reason why this "hypothesis" might not be worth discussing, and the obvious reason why it might be problematic, as opposed to the many worlds hypothesis, for example, is simple: the many worlds hypothesis was never used as a justification for institutionalized discrimination, whereas the innate intellectual inferiority of women (however construed) has been used to justify exactly that for centuries. Your seeming unawareness of this fact is disturbing.

Furthermore, and most importantly, you say that the reason there are fewer women in philosophy is to be explained by women's IQ distributions and you call this "the most promising hypothesis." I find that obviously problematic. To begin with, your "most promising hypothesis" for why there are fewer women in philosophy leaves philosophy and philosophers largely uninvolved -- blameless, really. I find it hard to believe that anyone who has read the What It's Like To Be A Woman In Philosophy blog, for instance, could plausibly deny that professional philosophy has a sexism problem and that such institutional or systemic discrimination likely plays a much greater role in the gender imbalance than any (unlikely) IQ difference. The effects of such discrimination likely swamp any possible IQ difference effects. Do you really think that comparing math prodigies to your run of the mill assistant professor of philosophy is reasonable? Philosophy is not so difficult as that! Also relevant here is the fact that such IQ oriented arguments to explain gender imbalances are mostly debunked; whatever such IQ tests say, they are likely NOT the primary explanation for such imbalances. See for example this http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/cosmicvariance/2005/09/22/bell-curves/.

I would recommend that EVERYONE who thinks that they have something to say about this issue go and read http://beingawomaninphilosophy.wordpress.com/ immediately. Then wonder why there are fewer women in philosophy than men. If you can still sincerely argue that it must be because women have lower IQs, you are self-deceived.

PS To see a much more polished argument that is strongly analogous to the one I've tried to apply here, see Jesse Prinz's critique of the "men are inherently competitive and violent" trope. He argues, convincingly, that such phenomena are better explained as historical, rather than biological difference. See here : http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/experiments-in-philosophy/201202/why-are-men-so-violent
Add that sort of argument to the recent study that showed that gender imbalances in math scores are highly correlated with political inequalities and you get a strong argument that gender inequalities are best explained by historical and political inequalities. See here: http://feministphilosophers.wordpress.com/2008/05/31/girls-innately-bad-at-math-nope/

[Marcus Arvan]

I would like to remind everyone again of the purpose of this blog. I created this blog with the express purpose of making it a safe, supportive, and welcoming place. This thread has -- as I expected -- crossed from safe, supportive, and welcoming into something else.

I will not permit this to continue. Please, everyone, respect the sanctity of this place. I have never yet had to intervene to protect it. I do not wish for this to be the first time. However, I will, if need be.

In closing, I will allow this thread to continue, at least for the time being. However, I will not hesitate to close the comments permanently if the aggressive tone of the discussion continues (no matter how sympathetic I may be with the views of aggressing parties).

[Marcus Arvan]

After further consideration, I have decided to close discussion of Russell Terman's "hypothesis." The hypothesis itself, the ensuing discussion of it, and, I think, any further discussion of it, are so out of line with the fundamental purposes of this blog that I will not allow it to be discussed here any longer.

Russell: I realize that you may think I am doing a "disservice" to the profession by not permitting further discussion of your view. My reply is that this blog aims to provide a *particular* service to the profession, to its members, and to its readers. Its purpose is *not* the general discussion of philosophical ideas.

I created this blog with the intention of making something good in a world all too full of darkness. The good I created it to provide is a place where early-career philosophers can congregate *safely* to discuss their lives, careers, and work. Discussion of your "hypothesis" here does not seem to me to be consistent with those aims.

Further discussion of the other issues raised in this thread may continue. Russell's topic is off-limits. All posts on this thread from here on out will be reviewed and approved or rejected by me in accordance with this policy.

[Russell Terman]

I understand. Thank you for allowing me to say what I have said; it is more than many people would allow.

[Marcus Arvan]

Hi everyone: in light of feedback I have received, comments are now reopened. Everyone should feel free to express their views, whatever they may be. I will only intervene if the discussion becomes philosophically unproductive.

[Stan]

Interesting. It seems to me that the discussion has missed the point, which only Kate seems to have recognized.

I should think we would all agree that there is no innate difference in the intellectual prospects of a male versus a female student. The possibility of some genetic factor seems both incredibly low and offensive; we should dismiss it for both reasons. Assuming this much, it seems that we'd have little reason to think that women are excluded from philosophy (or STEM subjects) on the basis of intellectual inferiority.

On my view, it seems instead that we instead see women avoiding or quitting these fields due to the systematic oppression they face. Note this oppression need not be 'real' in any way other than that it is perceived. It also need not be institutional (as by the faculty), but perhaps social (as by her peers). If a woman enrolls in a class full of men (and often taught by a man), she is likely to feel some understandable anxiety as a result -- especially if she has found it necessary to combat stereotypes for the whole of her academic career to date.

The problem is cultural, and it is part of our role as philosophers to challenge these sorts of social paradigms. By doing so, we also act as the apocryphal butterfly whose wings generate a hurricane -- our insistence on equality will resonate as a future-spreading wave, with the end result an environment in which the systematic oppression of women is no more.

From the perspective of the female students under discussion -- and I freely admit that my notion of this is purely empathetic -- it seems probable that they suffer latent oppression at all ranks of the educational system, and that this fact (assuming it is a fact) forms the framework through which they view these fields. If I'm right, then unless and until the lower levels of the educational system are impacted (recall that it is our role as philosophers to start this process), women will continue to perceive themselves as oppressed, and their male counterparts will continue to perceive women as inferior.

As a parent of elementary aged children (a girl and a boy), I have first-hand anecdotal evidence of the continued gender stereotyping which occurs. I do what I can to highlight it, but my efforts are not always successful. I find it particularly painful to note that the vast majority of educators at the earliest stages of a child's education are women. That is, the gender stereotypes which are unfortunately reinforced by their teachers are reinforced by women, and when I make a note of it, I get the impression that I'm just another man trying to tell a woman what to do.

Anyway, my feeling is that we need not so much to worry about exhibiting some 'heart' in philosophy, but that we need to focus especially on explicit inclusion of women (in such a way as to avoid giving them the problematic impression that they are being favored only because they are women). Probably that's a fairly difficult project, but it seems uncontroversial to say that we need to at least be mindful of it. It seems to me that by focusing on inclusion, we flap our wings and generate the hurricane -- at the very least, we are then contributing directly to the solution, rather than missing the point entirely in discussions about intellectual ability.

[Anonymous]

I am grateful to those who have posted thoughtful and helpful replies to Russell. As has been said, there is little reason to think that the research he finds so compelling (a) is correct or meaningful and (b) has anything to tell us about what is going on in philosophy (why would we think some particular, constructed measure of "IQ" is a guide to who will be good at a complex practice like philosophy, for pete's sake!).

Moreover, I can tell you that being confronted with people who seem to think it is a live possibility that women are just stupid most certainly makes for an unsafe space. Even were Russell correct, that women are less likely to be smart enough, it does not follow that *no* women are smart enough to be philosophers, or even that the distribution differences fall in any meaningful range for the ability to do philosophy - yet, again, taking the line that the reason for the small numbers of women is stupidity creates a hostile environment for all those women who *are* in the discipline, or considering joining it.

There is nothing to be gained from taking lack of ability to be the reason for women's scarcity in philosophy, and doing so does much harm. It serves only to justify and perpetuate the problem. On the other hand, efforts to make the discipline more welcoming will benefit *whatever* quantity of women do join the discipline, and ensure that they are empowered to do the best work they can, thereby enriching the field. Even were Russell correct, the right thing to do would be to work toward fixing the culture. The fact that it is also vanishingly likely that he *is* correct only amplifies that obligation.

And, seriously, Russell: Would you be comfortable making the same claims about any other group? Are you going to treat us next to claims that the underrepresentation of African Americans in philosophy is due to their being athletic but lazy? You are aligning yourself with an ugly tradition. I urge you to take this opportunity to join the side of empowerment instead of oppression. Doing so has long been one of the best kinds of philosophical work.

[Hugo Estrada]

I disagree. Let me put it in the most respectful way I can: male philosophy students, GSIs, and professors are dicks.

Okay, let me qualify that. Not all of them, but a big enough number of them, and, just as it happens in other fields saturated by males, the decent ones let the assholes insult and demean women.

My wife is one of the smartest people I know. She got a degree in philosophy in Berkeley. And I remember going to a study group while she was in college where a number of guys dismissed her. She would speak, and she was outright ignored. As if she didn't exist.

Then a male would make the >>exact point<< she had just made and then the other male students carefully listened and considered it. Since the individual who repeated my wife's point had testicles, it suddenly obtained a level of importance and intelligence that it previously lacked.

I saw this first hand. She never complained about it. I got angry. Writing this makes me as angry as I felt when I saw this.

This also happened in Berkeley, a place filled with enlightened left-leaning men. I am sure the guys ignoring my wife probably fell in that category.

So if there is a lack of women, I blame the culture and the failure of GSIs and professors to make it clear that you cannot treat female students that way.

[Russell Terman]

@Eugene: I've never denied that philosophy "has a sexism problem." I just think that ignoring actual differences in intelligence or aptitude, genetic or otherwise, is a huge mistake.

@Stan: What makes you say this?
"I should think we would all agree that there is no innate difference in the intellectual prospects of a male versus a female student. The possibility of some genetic factor seems both incredibly low and offensive; we should dismiss it for both reasons."
I discuss some evidence in favor of a genetic component in my post at 10/31 (8:56). That said, a) I am not sure that it is genetic (though I'd bet my life on it if forced to), and b) even a nongenetic gap may be consequential.

@Anonymous: IQ is an extremely good predictor of job performance in the most complex and intellectually demanding jobs (of which academic philosophy is certainly one): generally I see r's of .5-.6, but sometimes as high as .8. Also in the rather extensive Roe (1952) study of scientists' IQs, a median of around 166 was found.

Also:
"Even were Russell correct, that women are less likely to be smart enough, it does not follow that *no* women are smart enough to be philosophers, or even that the distribution differences fall in any meaningful range for the ability to do philosophy - yet, again, taking the line that the reason for the small numbers of women is stupidity creates a hostile environment for all those women who *are* in the discipline, or considering joining it."

I agree with your first point (of course there are some women who are bright enough to be philosophers––no one's denying that), but not your second. Again, I explicitly said that variance differences are NOT enough to explain sex differences in philosophy––they are just one factor.

"Would you be comfortable making the same claims about any other group?"

Yes. For example, I think that the overrepresentation of Ashkenazi Jews in philosophy and elsewhere is due (in part) to high intelligence.
http://harpending.humanevo.utah.edu/Documents/ashkiq.webpub.pdf

Russell

[Russell Terman]

Correction: on my post at 10/31 (8:56), I said that "However, the study finding a mean difference used a more representative sample." I meant "the study finding an SD difference." Sorry for any confusion.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous 11:20 here. Russell's insistence in the face of all that has been said is why this dialogue is not appropriate in what is supposed to be a supportive space, and why, Marcus, I think your initial instinct was correct. Russell is not here to be productive.

Even Russell admits that there is a cultural problem. Even if the (to me and others here highly dubious) data he cites were correct and meaningful, he has no way of showing that any of what he has said does anyone any good. This site, I take it, based on everything Marcus has said, is intended to be helpful. Discussion of how the cultural problem can be addressed is helpful. Calling women stupid is the opposite.

I have valued the dialogue on Philosopher's Cocoon, but it is not valuable enough to make me want to come here if I think I will be subjected to this kind of misogynist claptrap. Russell can take his agenda to the MRA forums where that stuff is welcome. I hope it will no longer be so here, because if it is, I feel I am not.

[Russell Terman]

Again, I have defended my data and my hypothesis as thoroughly as anyone. Inviting discussion on a topic and shutting off one promising and defensible hypothesis because it is "offensive" is just blatantly unfair. I have never denied that a) some women avoid philosophy because they feel that many professors, fellow students, etc. are sexist, and b) that many, many women are easily intelligent enough to be excellent philosophers.

[I do not mean the following to be offensive; in fact, I'm (part) Ashkenazi Jewish myself.]

Suppose that, after I made my comment in passing about Ashkenazi Jews' overrepresentation in philosophy, someone had said: "But I'm not Jewish––you're calling 'my kind' stupid! We don't know for sure that Jews are really so smart––what good does it do to discuss this idea? After all, didn't the Nazis think Jews were 'cunning' and 'clever'?" The fallacies in this case are pretty obvious. Yet when I make a similar argument about women, people reply, nearly unanimously, with just the fallacies above. Why? I think the answer is, simply put, the "yuk factor." People are not generally offended when Jews are praised for their intelligence. Yet they ARE generally offended when someone says something similar (if anything, more restrained) about women: there is a (slight) difference in male and female IQ variance, and this is (probably) responsible for (part of) women's underrepresentation in philosophy. The arguments can be nearly isomorphic, but because of the "yuk factor," our responses vary immensely. This is another highly important philosophical principle, and I'm a little disappointed that nobody has applied it here.

[Russell Terman]

@ Marcus, I think you are largely right here. But that is one of my points too. Very much of philosophy concerns the study of how our responses to nearly isomorphic arguments, or at any rate arguments that are similar in some relevant quality, differ (e.g., the trolley problem). My hypothesis was just as defensible, and defended just as well, as any other that was advanced.

I understand that some people feel my argument is a slight against women. I disagree. It goes without saying that I believe many women are more than qualified to be academic philosophers, and that people ought to be treated as individuals, regardless of gender, race, religion, etc.

Finally, I'll repeat what i said before––if you want to be an academic philosopher, you *will* run into arguments that seem shocking and offensive, and you *will* have to respond to them logically and dispassionately. How can Singer possibly advocate killing an innocent little baby? Doesn't he know that's murder? How can he possibly say that selling a child to organ donors is morally equivalent to refusing to donate to charity? *I* don't donate––is he calling me a monster?! How utterly shocking! And, moreover, these arguments have much more profound social consequences than anything I have said. You do nobody any favors by allowing the respectful discussion of provocative ideas in one area, and curtailing them in another.

[Marcus Arvan]

Let me add: these are my wishes because, in my judgment, your continuing to discuss this has made this a hostile environment.

[Russell Terman]

Yes, I will leave this discussion. But in turn, I would ask *you* to please respect my wishes in this case and answer the following question. I will allow you the last word and will not respond or argue further.

Your analogy involving the psychopath is ambiguous. Do you mean that the discussion of my hypothesis is *wrong*, regardless of whether it is true? Or do you mean that the "offensiveness" of the hypothesis entails its falsity?

–––––––––––

I'd like to conclude with a quote from a letter written in defense of one professor who advocated a theory similar to mine and faced sanctions from his university.

"An accurate assessment of sex differences in general intelligence is useful to policy makers in exactly the same way as knowing sex differences in shoe size is to shoe manufacturers. Designers of educational policy would be armed by knowing more, not less, about the characteristics of the individuals and populations that they serve. Average differences in general intelligence, if they exist, are part of that portfolio of useful information. A reported small mean difference, favoring males, in performance on a test of general intelligence is not a social catastrophe for females. It is simply a result from analyses of particular populations at particular times. It is causally neutral.

Scientific methods are the best way to establish whether this result is found in other populations or not. If this result turns out to describe many populations and, thus, describes the world as-it-is, then punishing the messenger must be wrong."

[Marcus Arvan]

Russell: I published a response to your final question but have now retracted it as I am unsure at the moment that I can reply in a properly composed way. I need time to make a proper decision about it. This thread has, I think, been a spectacle enough for me today. Running a blog that aims to be a good place is hard sometimes, and I am not entirely confident of my abilities to contribute to these ends adequately at the moment. I am retiring from this thread for the time being, for my own well-being.

[Kate Manne]

Russell, again, results such as those you're adverting to are not "causally neutral." They *affect* the people who are being theorized about - namely, women in philosophy - in a way that tends to negatively affect their performance and self-confidence. So that's one (not the only) crucial disanalogy to pay attention to, when it comes to shoe sizes and IQs.

"Do you mean that the discussion of my hypothesis is *wrong*, regardless of whether it is true? Or do you mean that the "offensiveness" of the hypothesis entails its falsity?"

I can't speak for anyone else, but of course I don't mean the latter. (That strikes me as a highly uncharitable reading of what *anyone* has been saying, incidentally.) I myself mean two things. One, your hypothesis seems to me a very bad candidate explanation for the underrepresentation of women in philosophy. Two, given the fact that your hypothesis has a *palpable effect* on female members of this community (in particular), I believe it should not be discussed. Your hypothesis *might* be true. It *might* even be a partial explanation of the underrepresentation of women in the profession. But it seems very, very unlikely, and possibilities that are both (a) slim, and (b) actively harmful to discuss *should not* be discussed, in my view. At least in fora such as these.

Btw, feminist epistemologists have had things to say on issues like these! Might be worth checking into.

[Russell Terman]

Why do you feel that the possibility of its truth is slim? The major argument that I have seen advanced against it (on this forum) is that it does not explain why male and female first-year philosophy students perform similarly or why most attrition is after the first year. My response is that: a) as another commenter pointed out, in the absence of detailed statistics it is difficult to evaluate this idea; b) early philosophy classes principally concern interpreting texts, which is highly loaded on verbal ability (in which women exceed men); more advanced philosophy classes rely more on formulation of novel ideas, which may load more on the first-order factors in which men exceed women; c) this contradicts Marcus's initial statement that "[in M&E] the male students largely seem to come alive whereas the females tend to have this look of "my goodness, do people really waste their time on this!?"; this suggests some source of disinterest or confusion that is more deeply rooted than sexism.

I think I made an error in my presentation of my argument: I did not put enough emphasis on my belief that many women are intellectually competent to be philosophers. If you are a woman and you enjoy philosophy and feel you have something to contribute to the field, by all means, go for it. I recognize that sexism in the field may depress the performance of women. But it is important to recognize the source of sexism––at least in part, it stems from an internalization of a statistic (most exceptional students will be male) that is then implicitly and unjustly applied to all women. I suspect that there may be a feedback loop involved: small innate aptitude differences create underrepresentation creates sexism creates further underrepresentation...Again, it is impossible to deal with sexism and to avoid wasting the talent of women who are intelligent and talented unless we recognize (one of the) source(s) of sexism.

[Kate Manne]

I'm not sure you've yet taken on board the central point about stereotype threat. Indeed, you've ignored this point for the duration of the discussion.

I've written about this issue some - and I'd be happy to email you a paper I wrote a while back on the Larry Summers controversy - that summarizes my reasons for thinking that the variance hypothesis for the underrepresentation of women in math and science is a poor explanation there. Much of the same reasoning would carry over. But I'm not going to summarize my position here, especially since this thread is supposed to be over.

"If you are a woman and you enjoy philosophy and feel you have something to contribute to the field, by all means, go for it."

Not sure if this was addressed to me personally, but, thank you, I am quite happy to be in the field..!

[Russell Terman]

It was not; the "you" was a general "you."

Please do email me your paper.

Re stereotype threat: As I said above, the best (in fact, only) way to deal with and mitigate stereotype threat is to acknowledge whatever the causes of sexism are and to deal with those causes.

[Kate Manne]

I don't have your email address, so why don't you email me (I am easy to google - would write it here, but don't want to get the spambots excited). I will send it along and you can take a look or just look at the references (as I said, feminist epistemologists have been interested in these questions for quite some time).

Re: stereotype threat, the phenomenon involves (roughly speaking) people of a certain group not performing well in a counter-stereotypical domain *when the relevant stereotype is triggered*. So one can indeed hope to deal with and mitigate stereotype threat by not throwing hypotheses about female lack of philosophical aptitude around, without good reason. For, that hypothesis (very plausibly) triggers a stereotype that can induce poor performance/self-doubt on the part of women, who would otherwise be doing/feeling better. Putting the idea out there that women may be worse at doing math tends to *make* women worse at doing math, at least temporarily. It's a disturbing but an empirically robust finding, which it's natural to generalize to the domain of philosophy.

I hope you'll agree this is a good place to leave things.

[Marcus Arvan]

Russell: you gave your word that you would leave this discussion. You have now violated that word. Your presence is no longer welcome here. I have a duty to protect this community. Members of this community -- and I am with them -- have expressed the view that this discussion is unbecoming of the fundamental aims of this blog. This thread is now permanently closed.