Women in Experimental Philosophy

At the end of the pre-SPP experimental philosophy workshop, Rob Wilson correctly suggested that we needed to think more carefully about why so few women have been active in the field so far.  I, for one, have given this some thought as well since it is odd to me that more women philosophers aren't interested in being part of the kind of experimental projects we undertake.  Of course, there is admittedly a problem with determining who gets to count as a "philosopher" in this context, since two of the most visible women who self-identify with experimental philosophy have appointments in psychology departments despite having training in philosophy (Jen Wright and Liane Young).  But be that as it may, it is nevertheless disappointing--however one decides to carve out the territory--that our growing field hasn't done a better job attracting a more diverse pool of participants. 

One possibility is that going into experimental philosophy is professionally dangerous given the hostility directed at the movement by many in the profession.  As such, it is a risky enterprise--which may thereby provide women (who are already disadvantaged in philosophy) with an additional disincentive.  This would also explain why psychologists may feel more comfortable doing experimental philosophical work.  After all, the kind of work we do is certainly not controversial in psychological circles!

That being said, I am ultimately less interested in why we aren't a more diverse crew--both in terms of gender and race--than I am in what we could do to improve on what is a real shortcoming of the field.  Given how collaborative, constructive, and interdisciplinary the x-phi community is, there is no excuse for our sharing the same gender and racial imbalances that plague philosophy as a whole.  So, what's the solution?  That 's a problem for us to work on solving together.

For starters, I officially invite any women who are interested in being part of this blog to send me an email--regardless of whether they have worked on experimental projects in the past.  As those of you who have contacted me before know, I am always more than happy to invite interested parties to play along.  All you need to do is ask.  Second, I encourage faculty to make a concerted effort to get women graduate and undergraduate students to be part of their experimental projects.  Not only does this provide students with the chance to get conference presentations and publications, but it also ties them into the broader closely knit network of experimental philosophers--all of which will help students both get into better grad programs (in the case of undergrads) and find better jobs (in the case of grad students). Finally, and most importantly, I invite all of you to open up dialog about experimental philosophy with  women colleagues in your home departments.  After all, there is a lot of interesting experimental philosophical work yet to be done and many fields that are ripe for inquiry remain untapped.  And it is high time that we actively try to ensure that as many voices and ideas make it into the experimental mix as possible. 

*There is a related post over at Feminist Philosophers (see here). 

Comments

[experimental philosopher]

If by "experimental philosophy" you mean philosophy done in conjunction with an experimental field, then there are at least three and possibly four (depending on whether it's required that they actually be in the labs) in the SPP.

I understand that you'd like their names handed to you on a list, but it's so wierd that you haven't noticed them yourself. It's as though women are invisible.

O wait! That IS the problem.

[tnadelhoffer]

Perhaps at least a very small part of the problem is that when people do make a good-faithed appeal for help in increasing the presence and visibility of women in experimental philosophy, this effort is written off as a sign of laziness and myopia. Keep in mind, I didn't ask for a list--I asked for emails from women interested in being part of the blog (and part of the movement more generally). I also made some other positive suggestions for increasing the number of women in experimental philosophy.

Setting aside the tone of your response--which seems counter-productive --I want to make an observation concerning what I take to be the hallmark of experimental philosophy. There is a difference between experimental philosophy--which involves running experiments/studies/surveys and using the results to do first order philosophical theorizing--and empirically informed philosophy--which incorporates the best available empirical data but does not involve actually "being in the lab." When you talk about philosophy done "in conjunction" with an experimental field, it is unclear which of these approaches you have in mind.

Obviously, there are tons of philosophers--both men and women--who do very interesting and important empirical philosophy. Indeed, most of the contributors to this blog are empirically minded rather than experimental in this sense. But when Rob Wilson asked about the dearth of women in experimental philosophy, I take it he was asking why so few women are experimental philosophers in the narrow sense. Obviously, it was clear at the SPP that there are women psychologists doing very interesting philosophical work (e.g., Liane Young, Tania Lombrozo, Barbara Malt, and others) and women philosophers doing very interesting empirically informed philosophy (e.g., Valerie Tiberius, Kate Devitt, Holly Anderson, and others). What was missing, however, were professional women philosophers doing experimental philosophy. Indeed, on the narrow account sketched above, to my knowledge the only two were Aysu Suhen (who is an undergrad down the road from me at F&M) and Alexandra Bradner (who made a special point of gently poking fun at the kind of work I do when introducing her poster during poster madness). Of course, I admittedly didn't have time to attend every talk or view every poster--so, it is possible (if not likely) that I am failing to mention someone.

That being said, if there are other women who are being overlooked, the best thing for them to do at this point is speak up (either via email or in this comment thread)--especially now that I have explicitly asked for their help in improving the state of affairs in experimental philosophy as far as women are concerned.

Complaining anonymously about being invisible in the very comment thread designed to address the unnecessary and puzzling masculinization of experimental philosophy (to borrow Wilson's phrase) does little to address the underlying issue I was trying to address. Indeed, it only helps to make it worse. After all, who wants to go out on a limb to discuss such a sensitive and important issue in a public forum if people insist on cutting the branches out from under the people who are at least making an effort to help?

[experimental philosopher]

Obviously I think there is a deep and systematic problem that is not solved by asking people to write you.

When people really want to start including those who are left out, they don't just ask for email. I have NEVER seen anyone who works at solving these sorts of problems say that was a good idea. It is in fact strangely demeaning for lots of people. I mean, we obviously haven't been worth your notice, but, hey, if we put up our hands now, then, well, we get in!

I suspect you just do not get it. You might be one of these people who think that minorities whom you've totally ignored are going to be thrilled if you tell them you really, really want to talk to them.

Well, don't try that either.

You want to solve the problem? Try putting some effort into it and finding out who in any equitable group would be obvious members of the SPP. And I mean people who do experimental work.

[EP]

in fact I think the problem is left in place by your invitation, just to be clear.

[tnadelhoffer]

I did not suggest the problem would be *solved* if people simply wrote me. Indeed, I suggested that was a first step. I took my other two suggestions--which you ignored--to be more important. This is not a function of my "not getting it"--rather, it is a function of your failure to read my earlier post with even a modicum of charity. That being said, imagine I put in the effort you suggest--namely, I go on a fishing expedition to uncover women philosophers who happen to do experimental work but who either don't (but could) self-identify with experimental philosophy or who haven't let me know they are interested in being part of the blog (which is something nearly all of the contributors in the side-bar have done in the past)--then what do you suggest I do? Send them unsolicited invitations to be part of this blog and the community more generally? How is that any different than reminding *everyone* in the most public forum we have that we are a highly collaborative and interdisciplinary group that welcomes any and all interested parties to join us?!

At the end of the day, I find your suggestion that I don't *really* want to start including women puzzling--especially since it is clear that you don't *really* want to be included. If you did, you would have been constructive (or at least supportive) rather than belittling. Moreover, rather than throwing a wet blanket on the thread before it even began, you would have simply emailed me so that I could have very happily and graciously asked you to add your voice to the blog.

Indeed, the irony is that I knew that by posting on this issue, I ran the real risk of having to spend time defending myself from this kind of response rather than working with everyone to try to figure out how progress might actually be made on this front. For your part, you have not made a single constructive suggestion. Instead you have impugned both my sincerity and my intelligence. I am sure your efforts have increased the likelihood that others will add their own voices to this particular comment thread...

[tnadelhoffer]

I have had to unpublish two comments that made no attempt to contribute to the discussion in a meaningful way. I obviously don't mind critical comments, but they should at least be written in a way befitting an adult. If more people insist upon posting comments that reduce people to their chromosomes (XX this or XY that) or that are designed to be nothing more than offensive and antagonistic, comments on this thread will have to be approved before they appear on the blog. This is a serious issue. And while people can obviously disagree--as EP and I clearly do--that does not excuse acting like a child.

[experimental philosopher]

A positive contribution. How about sending this to Pat Churchland:

Dear Patty,

I’ve been maintaining that there aren’t any women doing experimental philosophy, and then someone pointed out that you are really a foundational figure in the movement of philosophy toward involvement in the experiments of the scientific community. If you would like to join my blog, please send me an email

Also, if you have any female students who followed your lead, could you ask them to email me?

Finally, maybe you have some girl friends who are also working in this sort of cross disciplinary way. Could you ask them to email me?

Yours gratefully,

[Rob Wilson]

Since I raised the issue in the workshop sessions, let me say what prompted it. Gender ratios in philosophy bat at around 3:1; in the experimental philosophy workshop, of 11 or so presenters from philosophy departments, there was not a single woman; and amongst grad student coauthors and coresearchers in the presentations, very few women from philosophy were cited. And it ain't just a citation problem. There seem to be significantly fewer women taking on x-phi than in the general philosophy population.

X-phi itself is still in the process of self-definition, but it's pretty clear that very few neurophilosophers (inspired by Pat Churchland) would count themselves as x-phiers. Hey, after all, x-phiers aren't sticking electrodes into people's heads (or not much), and on the whole they're a little too enamoured of folk intuitions to warrant the serious attention of those who have moved on (in part) to cognitive neuroscience and neuroethics. A discussion of the whys on this might not be as important as some ideas for how to develop the field more inclusively. And some open discussion of that would be useful, certainly drawing on what we know from a lot of the work done largely by feminist philosophers on the general issue of diversity and inclusion. If you have ideas here, share them.

[Edouard Machery]

Here a few female philosophers who are doing or have done some experimental philosophy:
- Valerie Tiberius
- Jenny Nado
- Kate Devitt

Of course, the number of female psychologists who do experimental philosophy is much larger: Tania Lombrozo, Lisa Lederer, Jennifer Wright, and so on and so forth.

Edouard

PS: The critical reaction of "Experimental Philosopher" misses Thomas's point. Thomas was not asserting that there are few female philosophers who do experiments or contribute to experimental work. Names are easy to find (Churchland is obviously one of them). No, Thomas was correctly noting that there are few female philosophers among the rather small, but quite successful, group of philosophers who in the last five years self-identify (and are recognized by philosophers and others) as experimental philosophers.

[experimental philosopher]

I think it is very important to ask what is the mechanism by which people come to identify as an experimental philosopher and what precisely counts as so identifying. (Also, there are names of people who get mentioned or cited on this site who do not do surveys about intuitions, so it would seem there might be some elasticity there.)

Is there something in the social form of men getting together at conferences that makes it less easy for women - maybe particularly women who are not of the same age group - to get included?

Is it possible that women who try to join this blog find it impossible to do so? If so, perhaps there are more women who self-identify than you might think.

I do know one person (who may or may not be me) who tried 4 or 5 times to join this blog. (She can't remember whether she wrote to Tom once or twice before she tried other members.) I bet it will seem incredible to you that someone would do that and get no response whatsoever. Believe me, it is not that unusual. Perhaps an unfamiliar name gets deleted; we all get too much email.

If that's the mechanism, then it shows how important it is that people in a group recognize one's name. Networks of friends can determine who can get included. Women who didn't enter into friendships with a member of the group in grad school may well be much less likely to have the chance to pal around at conferences with the guys, and in any case may share less of the same informal interests.

[K J Norlock]

Greetings, from a member of the feministphilosopher blog! And thanks for noting that we linked to this. I think Edouard Machery's comment that many more feminist >psychologists< do x-phi is instructive of the absence of philosophers, female or no -- How many philosophers run experiments/studies/surveys in the course of their jobs or 'training' in graduate school? And like many women in philosophy, I was frequently the only woman in a class, working hard to gain acceptance in my social-science-free courses :-) which meant developing my acumen at logical abstraction. Having said that, I was simultaneously sitting in on meetings of the International Forgiveness Institute (I was at Wisconsin, home of the excellent Robert Enright), and thoroughly besotted with the joy of discussing the surveys/studies they were actively running. Yet only one philosopher in my home department (this was the nineties, pre-x-phi, so no surprise) seemed enthused about my pursuits (Claudia Card, feminist, and with an empirical bent), and my dissertation committee didn't suggest I had found a great way to do philosophy, or suggested it was an excellent precursor to my own research program! This is nothing against UW, which included excellent mentors who are still friends, but my tendencies toward interdisciplinary and feminist work seemed to be perceived as somewhat supplementary to my dissertation on theoretical treatment of forgiveness, rather than part of philosophy, you know? I'm sure this is a familiar story to all you x-phi types. And perhaps I was wrong to get that impression, indeed, yet there it is.

So, having said that, let me add some quick corrections. I must correct Rob Wilson's erroneous estimate of the gender ratio in philosophy, which my own research for the APA subcommittee on status of women shows to be about 21% -- we're batting 1:5, not 1:3, and that's after drastic increases from the eighties, when we were closer to 13% of philosophers. I suggest that as we're still nowhere near 50%, then Thomas Nadelhoffer's initial speculation that women aren't easily able to afford doing somewhat fringy work is likely correct; given my anecdote of personal experience above, I'd add to Thomas' thoughts that indeed, I didn't feel well placed to insist that my affiliation with the IFI constituted an excellent research program in philosophy. As it is, I tried to play down the feminism in my dissertation, with the result that it was less coherent than it would have been if it was simply straightforwardly experimental and feminist throughout. (Sure, I know better now! But then, I'm tenured now.)

I also wish to suggest, respectfully, that Thomas Nadelhoffer's initial wording in his post, wondering why women aren't interested, and I emphasize interested, may have contributed to touching off the less than charitable response of the anonymous poster. Since I am constantly saying things that do not come out as I intended, I myself do not attribute obtuseness (obtusity? obtusery? what fun) to Thomas, but taking the starting point that women exhibit disinterest, I'm just saying, may have been part of the source of the problem. I myself have always been interested, given that my specialization is forgiveness studies, in the revealing results of lay responses to studies and surveys, which have radically altered the way I write about forgiveness as admitting of multiple meanings rather than being suited to necessary and sufficient conditions. So I ask myself, why haven't I engaged in x-phi instead of just citing all the psychologists? (But thanks, Janice Haaken, Sharon Lamb, Wanda Malcolm and Kathryn Belicki!!) And my tentative answer is, I assumed x-phi was more loosely defined as empirical and reliant upon such studies, in which case, I was already doing it.

If I'm not, then maybe it's all the more reason to aggressively get out there, x-phi types, and more visibly demonstrate what you're doing and who can join you, and how. The how is perhaps the most important and yet too huge; women are disproportionately undergraduate instructors, and not even 20% of the top research institutions, so I find it hard to imagine how I would've embarked on such a research program.

Apologies for the length of the post, but these are dear topics to me.

[K J Norlock]

Oh, fudge, I took Rob Wilson to be saying women were 1/3 of philosophers, but he's clearly saying 1/4. Since we're more like 1/5, however, I still wish to correct him. Uh, victory! What do I win?

Sorry about that, Rob. I'm so annoyed with myself.

[tnadelhoffer]

EP stated "I do know one person (who may or may not be me) who tried 4 or 5 times to join this blog." I have never declined to invite someone to be part of this blog who expressed an interest in doing so. Either (a) the person in question was not using my correct email address, or (b) the email was getting filtered by the gmail spam software. Indeed, as I suspect anyone in the list of contributors can attest, I usually reply to these kinds of requests by immediately sending an official Typepad invite. Be that as it may, given that I have now made it abundantly clear that I am happy to welcome new members to the blog, this person--whomever s/he is--should send me an email to tnadelhoffer@gmail.com. As I have said repeatedly, the more the merrier. If you don't get a response, it is because I am not getting the email.

[tnadelhoffer]

I should have also mentioned that I wholeheartedly agree with EP about the networking issue--which is partly why this blog is an important tool for beginning to address some of the problems at hand. Several of the people I hung out with at the recent SPP--both men and women--are people I know primarily (or at least people I originally "met") via this blog. All the more reason to find more people who are willing to contribute. For what it's worth, it looks like this post may already be having a positive effect in this regard--which was the main short term goal of the post. The long term goal is to open the lines of communication about this issue so that the problem can be addressed while we are still a relatively small group. So, thanks to everyone who has responded thus far--even those of you with whom I might disagree on some issues :)

[experimental philosopher]

Tom, I have no doubt you are sincere about what you said happened to the email. But your assurance seems to carry an assumption about whether you'd act on bias without being fully aware of it.

The evidence that we all do so is pretty overwhelming. So also is the evidence that women standardly get very different reactions over a whole range of matters.
None of that addresses the specific issue of her email(s) addressed to you, but neither does the fact that those on this blog got responses from you.

I understand also that you are convinced that issuing an invitation to people to join is a productive step. My view that it isn't appears to have counted not at all. I think it is demeaning to have to show up as either a member of the second sex or as a member of an oppressed minority. One should have been included already on merits. But then what do I know? And it is a completely familiar phenomenon for a woman's disagreement in philosophy to count for nothing.

If something productive is going to happen, people will need to think deeply about how seemingly inconsequential choices can have a large impact on a whole group of people. And other things...

[experimental philosopher]

A final note: you might think I stood a much greater chance of being taken seriously if I had merely said I was insulted by this invitation to what I take to be demeaning behavior. And even more if I had just floated the idea that someone might have found it demeaning.

Possibly, but I think the chances of it were close to nil.

[tnadelhoffer]

EP,

Just to be clear: You are insulted that you (and others) were not explicitly invited to be part of the blog (workshop, conference, etc.) in the past and now you're insulted by that fact that I offered an open invitation to anyone interested now and in the future? If the fact that you felt (or in your eyes, were) excluded before is grounds for not wanting to be included now, that's fine. But I don't understand why you would begrudge my efforts to appeal to others--many of whom won't use the former as grounds for the latter--to contact me.

Setting that aside, I reject your suggestion that I encouraged women philosophers to consider joining the x-phi community solely because they are the "second sex" or the "oppressed minority." The invitation was based first and foremost on a "are you sympathetic with experimental philosophy?" criterion. In my own estimation, race, gender, socio-economic hardship, and the like are "plus factors" that merit extra consideration. Surely, that is not demeaning. If it were, then it is unclear how anyone could ever make progress towards eliminating the many exclusionary -isms that have plagued both the academy and the world more generally. After all, how else is one to address exclusionary behaviors and practices of the past if not by making a concerted effort to be more inclusive in the present and future? But in order to do so, one has to amend one's criteria for inclusion. If there are, for instance, 100 people you could invite to be part of a conference--80 of whom are men and 20 of whom are women (the rough #s within philosophy)--and you only have 10 spaces to fill, are you suggesting that no consideration should be given at all to gender when deciding who should be part of the conference?

Keep in mind, you didn't suggest that I email Paul Churchland--who would presumably be no less apt a contributor to this blog than Patricia. Why did you mention the latter rather than the former? Because the fact that she is part of an underrepresented and often unjustly overlooked subset of philosophers is an additional reason to pay attention to her above and beyond the fact that she is a brilliant philosopher who has consistently done ground-breaking work at the cross-roads of philosophy and psychology. You can't have it both ways. I don't see what good it does to complain about the exclusionary sins of the past while at the same time railing against one of the only inclusive means of redressing them. I am not asking for untalented women experimental philosophers to step forward to receive our hand-outs. Rather, I am asking that talented women philosophers who (a) are doing experimental work, and (b) have either felt excluded in the past or who have not (for whatever reason) given any thought to being included, please consider joining our community. If you find that demeaning or insulting, then the odds of my either saying or doing anything satisfactory at all by your lights, is surely nil. Indeed, you will likely begrudge me for even having made an effort at all.

Kathryn,

Thanks for your input. For what it's worth, I sincerely apologize both to you (and EP) if the "interested" language came across the wrong way. All I really meant to highlight was my surprise that so few women philosophers are part of our closely knit community given that (a) our work is often indistinguishable, at least in terms of method, from social psychology, and (b) there are so many more women in psychology than philosophy in the first place. As such, I would have thought the ratio of women to men in experimental philosophy would be greater than the ratio of women to men in philosophy more generally. But that is unfortunately not the case--which is precisely the problem/issue I was trying to highlight in this post. If I shot myself in the foot by framing it in terms of interest, I am really sorry.

[anonymous]

Two more women who have been active in x-phi that I don't think have been mentioned yet: Erica Roedder and Stacy Swain.

Given the fairly small n of experimental philosophers; and given that there really are a number of papers with female authors, even first or primary authors; and given that 21% base rate that Norlock has quoted... well, has anyone actually crunched the numbers to see whether the x-phi community is really less representative gender-wise than philosophy on the whole? (I must admit to have been nonplussed by Rob Wilson's assertion that x-phi had a _particularly_ bad gender imbalance problem. My nonscientific impression is that it's pretty much on average for the profession, better than metaphysicians by far & not nearly so good as ethics.)

[tnadelhoffer]

Anonymous,

Crunching the numbers is a good idea. Let me know what you turn up and what criteria you used with respect to what counts as x-phi (not that much hangs on how you happen to carve out the field). Regardless of how well we compare to the rest of philosophy, we could certainly be doing better. Hence, this post...

In the meantime, thanks for reminding me about Erica and Stacy. I am pretty sure the latter is leaving philosophy for greener pastures (or at least that was the plan the last time I spoke with her), so I don't suspect she would have an interest in being part of the blog (but I will surely ask). Since Erica's paper with Joshua was both really interesting and part of my on-line conference, I am surprised and embarrassed that she is not already part of the blog. Of course, to be fair, in the past I never made an effort to track people down (except in the very beginning). Instead, I simply naively assumed people would contact me if they were interested in contributing (hence, the "interest" language I unfortunately used to frame this post). But as has become clear in this thread, that was obviously not as inclusive an approach as I would have hoped. So, thanks for the reminder!

[Jender]

It's right to be embarrassed about not having noticed women who were potential contributors to the blog. However, a bit of knowledge about the extent of and workings of implicit bias makes it really unsurprising. We (nearly?) all have these biases, even if we explicitly have strong feminist beliefs, and they're going to have effects. Our JJ has a great post up on this: http://feministphilosophers.wordpress.com/2008/07/02/the-second-snort-philosophy-women-and-the-problem/. The article linked to there also suggests solutions.

[Rob Wilson]

Kathryn,
Thanks for the correction (and the correction to the correction). I actually had in mind the ratio of people involved in philosophy at the ph.d and post-ph.d level, whose ratio does seem to be closer to 25%, based on the reliable % of women grads for the past 10 years or more, which hovers around or just over 25%. This was mainly because I was focused as much on the apparent near-absence of female grad students from the partnerships that x-phiers who are already employed in post-ph.d. job as on the overall figures for the field. and in the background of this is also my impression that while women are represented at as least the profession raio (20-25%) in naturalistic approaches to philosophy ("empirical philosophy" or "x-phi" in the very wide sense that Tom mentioned at the outset), they seem to be way under in this particular naturalitic approach ("x-phi" in the narrow and relevant sense here). Sorry if this was misleading.

and, "anonymous": you might be non-plussed for various reasons, and you might even be right about the situation in x-phi not being any worse for women than in philosophy more generally. In which case there is a decided "appearance problem", since from the x-phi workshop--and from contributors to this blog prior to THIS discussion--women DO appear to be under-represented EVEN RELATIVE TO FIGURES IN THE RANGE OF 20-25% for the % of philosophers who are women. I'm always happy when something that looks troubling lies wholly in the appearances (and then we can worry about the appearances separately), but having some figures here would help me to be more optimistic than I am about the situation (vs the prospects for remedy). Otherwise I guess we can just out-non-plus each other ... :>) ... but then we'd hardly be true to the spirit of x-phi ... unless, of course, we did a survey on it ... --raw

[K J Norlock]

Ach, what a shame that Rob gently refuted Anonymous' suggestion, because I optimistically thought the same thing: Perhaps x-phi is no less representative than the rest of our wacky profession.

I must urge my mates here not to extrapolate women's numbers in the profession from women's graduate rates over the last decade or two; their increase in graduate rate coincides with a significant decrease in the number of grads who get jobs, and along with the ever-tighter job market of the eighties, nineties and today, one must also continue to include persistent underrepresentation in hiring. Graduation rates do not correlate with employment. And indeed my base # was taken from Bureau of Labor Statistics and NCES data (such nice, helpful bureaucrats! they really enjoyed crunching the payroll data); naturally I took the graduation rates to be of interest, but they're not really helpful to measuring employment data.

Am I the only one who's noticed that Rob's initials spell out "raw"? What enviable initials.

[Lisa Lederer]

I think it's great that Rob's comment inspired such spirited debate about the gender imbalance in X-phi, and in philosophy in general.

We could demonstrate our devotion to the experimental method, however, by investigating this experimentally. In studies of gender differences in online communication styles, it has been found in analyses of listserv transcripts (Herring, 1996) that men tend to have an "expository" style which is more "assertive and argumentative," tending to "challenge and criticize others," while women tend to have an "epistolary" style which "includes more efforts to "continue dialogue and avoid confrontation." (No comment on the ironic relation between this generalization and my post here.) This generalization is based on tallies of the number of qualifiers (e.g. "it seems to me," "I think") and intensifiers (e.g. "very," "of course") in men's and women's posts: in many, women were likelier to use qualifiers, men, to use intensifiers. If this is true of the X-phi blog as well, which seems one of the main channels attracting people to X-phi, it could be that many women who survey the blog are disinclined to participate because they are "turned off" by the tenor of the conversation.

So, is it true? I looked at posts made in the last three months (excluding announcements of conferences) and this is what I found. Of course, the ratio of total words posted by men to total words posted by women was very high: 13,963:1,606. (Unfortunately, the small sample size of women's posts makes it difficult to draw conclusions.) I only found 3 qualifiers/intensifiers with substantial numbers of occurrences. Occurrences of question marks, which I interpreted as marks of qualification, in men's posts was 35 (.25%) and women's was 4 (also .25%). (I tried to exclude direct quotations from stimuli.) Men:women ratio for "I think" was 28:3, or .20%:.19%. "Might," another qualifier, produced a potential effect, 37:6 or .26%:.37%.

Notably, another study (Sayers, 1987) found that, in natural speech, the number of qualifiers used varies with the gender of one's conversational partner; so men may actually be using so many qualifiers, in the XP blog, because their audience consists mostly of other men.

But the conclusion to draw from this semi-significant mini-analysis, I think (so to speak) is that the forces that drive someone to join a group as seemingly benign as the X-phi blog run much deeper than simple e-mail invitations, and include the group's manner of interaction and ultimate purpose. Even if women do not actually refrain from joining the blog because they have read it, its language may reflect a more general tenor of the X-phi group. I am NOT implying that women are often turned off from the XP movement for merely frivolous reasons; human beings in general are very sensitive to ingroup-outgroup dividing lines. Nor am I implying that anyone could have been expected to launch a major XP female recruitment campaign; Tom has made me feel very welcome on this site, even posting a "welcome message" for Justin and me when we joined.

I think we will abate this gender imbalance problem if we all encourage female friends to contribute to this blog. This could have a snowball effect, shifting the manner of interaction (and ultimately the social "definition") of the group.

[Kate Devitt]

Thanks Tom for posting this. I know first-hand how much energy goes in to fighting the various emotions in these issues.

Clearly people publish with their friends or at least with people they trust and have established relationships with. There may be a simple issue that women are not good friends with the movers and shakers in experimental philosophy (for whatever reasons).

How to shake this up? Put money where the mouth is: Offer travel stipends for women (with accepted presentations based on peer review) to future X-phi workshops/conferences. We all know that the networking happens face-to-face over beer or between talks. Get more women on board by advertising the funding opportunities to philosophy departments. (You'll note that administrative staff and department heads always seem to pass emails that say 'get $$' from important folks). Women who otherwise might not submit papers (or consider doing the research at all) might reconsider if they think there's a chance they can actually afford to attend a conference and progress professionally. They might also be impressed at such pro-active behaviour and feel more confident about emailing you guys. I for one found the X-phi mob much more friendly and nice and encouraging in person than the tone of the blog in general. I also think it would be a great advertisement for the emerging discipline as a whole.

Another thing that would help me (at least) is to know how to do the programming to construct an online survey. I've got an experiment close to being 'ready to go', but not quite sure how everyone gets their stuff online. This sort of information usually gets passed down from man to man; and women outside the group are too terrified to ask for fear of looking like idiots. So, here I am. Hands up. Any help with the pragmatics would be appreciated.

Cheers,
Kate

[tnadelhoffer]

Kate,

Thanks for your response. I am delighted to hear that you have a study in the works. I have used both Survey Monkey and Question Pro--and I prefer the latter. It is very easy to set up, inexpensive ($150 for the year), and it makes data analysis easy. The only difficulty is finding participants. But each survey has a dedicated url--so, you can offer your students (as well as your friends' students, so long as your friends are willing to help you out!) extra credit for taking the survey. You can set it up so that when participants complete the survey, they get a number which they turn into you for the extra credit. If you would like more info, send me an email. I am obviously happy to help. Just let me know. Oh, that reminds me, if you follow the link to Dushan Wegner's homepage (he is one of the contributors to the blog), he has a post on how to set up on-line surveys for free with google (if my memory serves me correctly).

On an unrelated note, I wanted to say that your suggestion concerning travel stipends is a good one. One benefit to starting a society and having meetings at the APA is that we can use the dues--especially since they would be higher for faculty than students--to offer awards and stipends to the undergrads and grad students who would be presenting their work at the APA meetings. Of course, there wouldn't likely be that much money to go around since there likely won't be that many dues paying members. But we could nevertheless certainly do our part to help undergrads and grad students along. Indeed, I view that as one of the most positive things that experimental philosophy brings to the table. Several years ago, co-authored papers in philosophy were rare. Rarer still were papers co-authored with grad students and/or undergrads. Now, however, it is not only increasingly common for grad students to work with faculty but undergrads are even working their way into the mix (e.g., Annie Steadman published some articles with Fred Adams in Analysis and I have a paper coming out in Mind & Language with Tatyana Matveeva--one of my undergraduates here at Dickinson). By my lights, this is a very positive development.

OK, that's it for now. Let me know if you would like any more help with the survey.

Cheers,
Thomas