Philosophy department closing the gender imbalance in the field

Socrates, Plato, Decartes — nearly all famous philosophers are men, and the Penn Philosophy Department’s demographics also skew male. Only four out of 14 members of the Philosophy Department are female.

This imbalance is not Penn-specific. It represents a larger gender gap in philosophy as a field.

“Whenever I hear about well-known philosophers at other schools, they’re always male,” College sophomore JinAh Kim said.

Philosophy is somewhat notorious for being one of the most male dominated fields in the humanities. In fact, women receive a smaller percentage of doctorates in philosophy than in other stereotypically male dominated fields, such as economics or math. Data in previous years has shown that philosophy is one of the fields that women get the lowest number of doctorates in, even lower than some of the hard sciences, according to the research journal, “Science.”

With that knowledge in mind, it becomes unsurprising that Penn has a similar gender gap.

“Penn Philosophy has been pretty good at representing women on faculty compared with the field as a whole, though we’re a bit worse now than we were a few years ago,” Philosophy professor Karen Detlefsen said.

Students majoring or minoring in Philosophy are aware of the uneven gender ratio in the department. But the gender gap between students in the field is far less apparent, which may be an effect of students outside the major or minor taking introductory level courses, or courses cross-listed with other departments.

College Sophomore Ben Cushing said his philosophy class last semester was “fairly balanced.”

Kim said she initially didn’t notice the gender disparity in her classes, but on second thought said they were mostly “male-dominated.”

Those hoping to pursue philosophy in the future might be discouraged by the imbalance.

“It doesn’t bother me as much just as a student, but in the context of possibly going into academia after college, it’s a little intimidating,” Kim said.

However, the department is looking to change things for women looking to go into academia in philosophy. The gender ratio among graduate students is “pretty close to even on the male/female ratio,” according to Detlefsen.

“I don’t know how much of this careful, thoughtful discussion goes on in other philosophy departments,” Detlefsen said. “It is something I have noticed and appreciated about Penn’s Philosophy Department.”

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