Women in Philosophy ― What Needs to Change?

Despite its place in the humanities, the career prospects and numbers of women in philosophy much more closely resemble those found in the sciences and engineering. This book collects a series of critical essays by female philosophers pursuing the question of why philosophy continues to be inhospitable to women and what can be done to change it. By examining the social and institutional conditions of contemporary academic philosophy in the Anglophone world as well as its methods, culture, and characteristic commitments, the volume provides a case study in interpretation of one academic discipline in which women's progress seems to have stalled since initial gains made in the 1980s. Some contributors make use of concepts developed in other contexts to explain women's under-representation, including the effects of unconscious biases, stereotype threat, and micro-inequities. Other chapters draw on the resources of feminist philosophy to challenge everyday understandings of time, communication, authority and merit, as these shape effective but often unrecognized forms of discrimination and exclusion. Often it is assumed that women need to change to fit existing institutions. This book instead offers concrete reflections on the way in which philosophy needs to change, in order to accommodate and benefit from the important contribution women's full participation makes to the discipline.

Katrina Hutchison is a postdoctoral researcher at Macquarie University and is currently working on research projects on the ethics and epistemology of surgery. She also has research interests in feminist philosophy and in the role and value of philosophy beyond the academy.

Fiona Jenkins teaches and researches in the School of Philosophy, Research School of Social Sciences, at the Australian National University. She is also the convenor of the ANU Gender Institute. Her present research includes a project on Judith Butler's political philosophy, and one looking at how disciplines in the Social Sciences have integrated feminist scholarship. She is a co-editor of Allegiance and Identity in a Globalising World (2013) and a special edition of Angelaki, "The Limits of the Human" (2011).