Diversity in the SCP

Kevin, I am very interested in seeing the responses to your questions--great post. I am a philosophy graduate student myself and I am black (and male). I am still new to graduate philosophy but my overall experience has been positive. From the day I started though, I have searched in vain for a philosopher who is black and specializes in my areas of interest (Medieval Philosophy and Philosophy of Religion). I haven't attended any SCP conferences yet but I have gone to a few EPS and I don't recall any presenters who were black nor do I recall meeting any non-white professors of philosophy.

Generally I am not bothered by this at all. There are times though that I do look for role models to emulate if only to gain the momentary confidence that I too can make it. Is it worth doing a study on this question? I think so. Should we care about the answers? Definitely. As for possible explanations, I just don't know whether I could point to one thing (or two or three things) that would account for the under-representation of black scholars in the SCP, but I suspect the numbers are similar in other Graduate fields of study.

My buddy (and fellow blogger) Keith and I, joke a lot about the fact that I am the only black philosophy grad student in all my classes. We seriously entertain the possibility that I may be the only one in the philosophy department. This makes for some good jokes but it is a pretty sad state (and I don't mean that as a swipe at my University).

What could the SCP do? Perhaps one thing would be to take stepts that might encourage the study of philosophy (and esp. christian philosophy) among young students in general. At the college level, there is usually a wider pool of minority students.

I think the cases of non-whites and women need to be analyzed separately in some respects. It had never occurred to me to notice this, but Laurence Thomas once pointed out to me that until very recently most women who have become influential philosophers (especially in analytic philosophy) got their start in history of philosophy and then have gone on to do other things. There have been a few exceptions (with some remaining in history and others not starting there), but this seems to me to be generally true until the last decade or so.

But this isn't generally true of non-white philosophers, who tend to start out focused on more core contemporary issues and usually (but not always) move to focus more on race and ethnicity issues later in their careers. I'm not sure what the explanation for this difference is, but it shows that not everything true of women in philosophy will be true of non-whites in philosophy and vice versa.

Xavier,

Thanks for your comments and encouragement on this subject. I look forward to the discussion too (now, the rest of you, discuss!).

Jeremy,

Laurence's observation is very interesting.

You're probably right that these 2 aspects should be treated separately.

So make version A of questions (1) - (5) be with respect to gender, and version B of questions (1) - (5) be with respect to race.

Xavier:

Jorge Garcia is "a philosopher who is black and specializes in [your] areas of interest".

Kevin:

After last year's central APA, I was quite concerned about the underrepresentation of women at philosophy of religion sessions. My impression was that not only were women less represented in philosophy of religion than in philosophy at large, but, I felt, even less than in metaphysics at large.

I wrote Kelly Clark asking if he knew anything. He had someone send me SCP stats which I can't dig out, but they were very unfortunate.

A hypothesis that came up in conversation with a colleague is that Christians face certain difficulties in grad school, and women face certain difficulties in grad school, and when one combines the two sets of difficulties, people may just look elsewhere career-wise.

My colleague HE Baber says that the SCP membership is roughly similar in terms of the gender divide to that of the SCP conferences. She also thinks that there is sociological explanation for this divide, though a slightly different one than that suggested by Alexander. (I've encouraged her to weigh-in on this when she gets a chance.)

Here is the data from the conference that I hosted (This was just from a quick glance at the program, and I'm NOT certain that it's 100% accurate):

Keynotes: 2 M, 1 F
Concurrent papers: 23 M, 3 F
Commentators: 19 M, 5 F

It would take a fair bit of work to reconstruct the M/F ratio of submissions. Perhaps I'll do that tomorrow.

There are far fewer women than men proportionate to their representation in the profession in the SCP because there are proportionately far fewer professional women, including philosophers, who are religious than men. Churches by and large are not good places for educated, professional women: they cater for "traditional women" so in virtually any given church on the ground you will see more women than men but of the women you will see proportionately more women who are housewives or work only part time than you'd see in the population, and far fewer educated, professional women with careers rather than jobs.

Women are less represented in good journals because proportionately more choose to work in peripheral areas, like feminism and various "applied ethics" areas. Women choose to do this because they can. If you have a special characteristic that you can exploit to get a job or tenure in a competitive area, as a rational chooser you'll use it. So, if you're a woman you do feminism. Practically speaking, doing feminism and related peripheral topics provides women with professional options and networks to which white males don't have ready access--at the cost of working in peripheral areas and doing inferior work.

However this is a cost most of us are willing to pay because in a field as competitive as philosophy you will do any damn thing to get a job and tenure, and take advantage of anything you can.

Does Gracia consider himself black? I've never met him, but I've never seen anything in his writings on race to indicate this. He does self-describe as Latino and as Hispanic. That's not inconsistent with being black, but I'd be surprised if he didn't mention it in any of the work I've read.

Based on data I got from the SCP last June, 7.7% of SCP membership is women.

As an Asian woman, I’ve given this matter a great deal of thought. I was never interested in gender issues until I went to seminary—it’s virtually unavoidable in that context. I was the only Asian woman that I knew of in my undergraduate philosophy department (UCSD) and I’m currently the only Asian woman that I know of in my masters program (Talbot)—although they accepted more women this year than any other year (about 10).

Philosophy of religion is definitely not an obvious choice for women. There are the usual hurdles of getting married and raising a family (of course, these are good things, but they often eliminate the possibility of doing doctorate work for most women). There are other sociological constraints—e.g., the assumption that certain careers are considered appropriate for women such as being a teacher (K-12), secretary, or nurse. Women (as men) will imitate what they see exemplified. The fact that there are so few women philosophers (particularly in philosophy of religion) perpetuates the status quo. On top of this, there are religious constraints (as already mentioned), in that, churches generally do not encourage women to pursue these types of careers (or even provide an environment where women who are critical thinkers can thrive). As a woman called to be a Christian philosopher, I often find that I don’t fit in anywhere. At work (I work as an appellate research attorney), all of my female colleagues think more or less as I do—except that they’re nonbelievers and liberal feminists. It’s an entirely different scene at church—very few women think as I do. My conversations are with housewives, teachers, secretaries, and nurses—and my attempts at a philosophical discussion usually ends in disaster or, at least, disappointment.

Asians have a different set of hurdles (social constraints and stereotypes). I would agree that gender and race need to be considered separately. Let’s see, how does it go again, oh yes: Asians generally excel in the technical and scientific fields. Their strength is usually not in the humanities. They may have language problems. And their writing skills may be sub par. There are a lot of assumptions and misconceptions.

I’m sure we can think of a variety of reasons for the lack of diversity in philosophy. I’m not a member of the SCP (yet), but I am planning on applying to Ph.D. programs in January 2008. My hope is that with more female Christian philosophers/scholars to set examples for other women both in the academy and in churches, we will begin to see more diversity. From a historical perspective, there is a lot more diversity now than, say, 30 years ago. And I’m certain we will see a great deal of change in the next 30 years.

To answer part of Kevin’s original question. I think everyone agrees that there are few women in the SCP. (I’ve been sensitive to some of this since Evelyn Brister painfully pointed out that among the philosophy group blogs it is only Prosblogion that has no female contributors.) I suspect H.E. Baber’s comment likely explains much of scarcity of women in philosophy of religion. That said I would like to point out that while women certainly make up a small percentage of the SCP, some of those same women make a huge contribution to the field. In particular I’m thinking of women such as Marilyn Adams, Lynne Rudder Baker, Frances Howard-Snyder, Eleonore Stump, and Linda Zagzebski. These women alone have written enough such that I think one would be remiss in not including some of their work in a standard philosophy of religion course. If young women were coming through programs where they were exposed to such authors I suspect they would have more willingness to enter the field.

Choe is dead on: churches are not congenial to "non-traditional" women--and that includes liberal churches that make a fuss about feminist theology and "inclusiveness." Activities and organizations are still highly sex-segregated. I've felt the same disconnect between my professional world and the world of the church, between the roles I'm expected to play in those two worlds. I wonder if men experience that disconnect as sharply.

The SCP has been very congenial to women--there are, and have always been proportionately more women on the Executive Committee, and far more women as presidents of the Society, than there are women in the SCP. But encouragement from within the SCP, or within the profession, isn't going to do much to get more women into philosophy of religion. People don't get religion because they're interested in philosophy of religion--they get into philosophy of religion because they're religious. The problem is outside the SCP and outside the profession--and I don't know what we can do to fix that.

I wonder if there are at all significant numbers of nuns working in philosophy in the U.S. I somehow suspect not--my feeling, not based on any data, is that female regulars (I dislike the term "religious" in this context; "regular" is the proper term for people under a rule) are more likely to work in theology proper rather than philosophy than male regulars are (not the numbers there are that big either).

Still, I wonder if there might not be some Dominican nuns, say, that the SCP could reach out to.

Not. If you want to reach out, reach out in your own church and try to get them to make the church more user-friendly to "non-traditional" women.

When I've raised this issue--and I've done so often--the response is typically that women aren't a problem since they outnumber (in some cases overwhelmingly outnumber) men in the church. The problem is getting more men to church. And in some cases trying to do that meant making church even less friendly to non-traditional women by promoting more sex-segregated men's organizations and activities and recruiting more men for leadership roles.

My conjecture is that women's entry into non-traditional careers is in part responsible for the overall decline in church membership. Here is the explanation. Empirical fact: women usually make the church-going decision in families (stereotypically dragging along unwilling husbands) so when women drop out whole families drop out. When men drop out, typically they don't take their whole families with them. So if an increasing number of women drop out, you can expect to see proportionately more women in church but fewer people in church overall.

That's exactly what we're seeing because there are increasing numbers of educated professional women for whom the church is uncongenial. So churches are left with a diminishing population of traditional women and their families--elderly ladies and socially conservative working class families.

Chong,

For what its worth, my sense is that the percentage of women at Talbot is about the same as in, say, the SCP. I do know of several Asians who have successfully gone through the program (and on to Ph.D. programs), including a couple of women.

Matthew,
It’s important to be sensitive to the issue and make an effort to include work written by women, but only if it is relevant and of the same quality as the work written by men. Also, we should keep in mind that, while the inclusion of one or two female authors may be better than none, it too sends the message that philosophy of religion is not for women. (I’ve only come across Eleonore Stump so far in reading on the subject.) The same is true when I survey faculty lists at different graduate schools—the presence of one or two women does not send a welcoming message. I take note of these things, but I make my decisions based on the quality of the program (just as a woman’s inclusion in a program should be based on the quality of her work).

Justin,
I’m surprised to hear that there were other Asian women who have completed the program successfully (I knew of one, but she dropped out).

As to Kevin’s fifth question, I think SCP should make efforts to recruit at the undergraduate level (Dominican nuns?). There are a lot more women in philosophy programs at the undergraduate level. Unfortunately, most secular schools are not emphasizing this particular area. But professors can make information available on the professional organizations (including, but not limited to, SCP)—I’ve always wondered why this was not done. There seems to be no organized way of providing this sort of information to students. SCP also can include the generic "commitment to diversity" language in its materials for public consumption.

Chong, here is the link to the SCP membership info: http://www.siu.edu/~scp/membership.htm. Note the special student rate of less than 7¢ a day. As a woman, I'd like to see more women in!

I'd like to see a "commitment to diversity" statement in the SCP literature because the under-representation of women has come up repeatedly and it's one of the issues we've been discussing for quite a long time. Maybe a good place for it would be in the middle of or after "The Society is open to anyone interested in philosophy who considers himself or herself a Christian. Membership is not restricted to any particular "school" of philosophy or to any branch of Christianity, nor to professional philosophers."

It might in fact be an interesting idea to have a conference--either regional or special event--on the theme of "diversity" and "inclusion" in the church.

H.E.,

Did you just volunteer to host a conference? :)

I think there are two distinct but closely related issues here. (1) Diversity among SCP membership. (2) Diversity among philosophers with strong interests in philosophy of religion.

It is my impression that most members of SCP have strong interests in philosophy of religion (and of course in many other things as well, but the philosophy of religion interest is, I think, a commonality). But it is also my impression, simply based on looking at people in audiences at APA sessions, that women are very much underrepresented among philosophers with interests in philosophy of religion.

If this is correct, one way to help with the SCP diversity issue could be to reach out to Christian philosophers who do not have a strong interest in philosophy of religion. The SCP might well benefit from this in multiple ways, and people may start making interesting philosophical connections, etc.

But that still leaves the issue of the underrepresentation of women among philosophers working in philosophy of religion, which worries me rather more (I think areas of research are more important than professional organizations).

Question: Does the latter underrepresentation already begin at the undergrad level?

(I don't have any statistically significant data because Georgetown students haven't been signing up in significant numbers for my philosophy of religion classes. From memory, the three times I taught philosophy of religion at Georgetown, my class compositions have been: 2M1F, 1M1F, and 4M, respectively. When I taught an upper level class on Aquinas and Augustine on the Trinity, I think it was 8M2F. However, I am also under the impression that Georgetown men tend to be less religious than Georgetown women, which may help explain this data.)

Kevin,
Thanks for this post. I’m glad to see the issue raised, and I’ve been thinking quite a bit about Choe and Harriet’s comments about the cultural climate in today’s churches being inhospitable to female intellectuals. I wonder if another reason why fewer Christian women go into philosophy is that in many Christian circles, women tend to start families earlier, though I only have anecdotal evidence for that claim. In general, the academy isn’t yet the friendliest place for women who choose to have families, as evidenced by the number of women who drop out of graduate programs or run into trouble with the tenure clock when they become pregnant.

Having recently joined the ranks of philosopher moms, I am incredibly lucky to have female mentors who have successfully raised children and made important contributions to the philosophy of religion. I would hope that the SCP could be the sort of place where other women could make such contacts, though I’m not sure what can be done to encourage that.

Kevin, YOU volunteered to host a conference :)