Damn...

    I just lost a 1,000 word blog post. Fucking firefox. So, why do you think women are so underrepresented in philosophy when compared to similar humanities disciplines?

Comments

[Steve Calderwood]

I think one of the reasons is that the history of philosophy is so male-dominated and little effort has been made to re-frame it in terms that expresses less male-domination. Consider that most intro to philosophy courses deal with history of philosophy or classical ethical theories, both of which are almost entirely dominated by men.

I think we should reconceptualize the history of philosophy around "ideas" rather than the philosophers themselves. Plus that way you can bring in more "minor philosophers" who played (somewhat) significant roles in the development of the ideas and some of these "minor philosophers" are women (e.g. Elizabeth of Bohemia, a correspondent of Descartes, was one of the first to call him out on his substance dualism claims).

That's just ONE of many reasons.

[PFunk]

For me, it was because I didn't want to take a symbolic logic class. Too much like math. And, ya know, women are inherently bad at math, thus...

[Billy Joe Mills]

I would say because of the innate differences between men and women...hahahaha...that's just a fun allusion to your post on my blog. Your contribution is welcome, so thanks much for it, and I hope to see you blogging more often...actually I'm gonna link to you now in our UIUC section, so hopefully you'll get a few hits from that.

[fizhburn]

A female philosopher recently opined in my hearing that it is because of a (learned?) difference in intellectual style between men and women which derives from a fundamental difference in their social psychology. Specifically, that men are more confrontational than women, more willing to _argue_ even when what's going on is nominally a discussion. This aggressive behavior, exposed as young female philosophers are to it by gender-disproportionate faculty and/or grad students, just turns curious women off. They don't want a fight, as it were, even an intellectual one. So the combination of a lack of role models which is, as is emphasized in other discussions of this topic in the form of a lament about the historical repression of the sex class, a sadly ongoing fact with this intellectual pissing-contest style of discourse creates a hostile "work" environment.

Plus everybody knows titties make you dumb.