Here's something I noticed today, in the course of preparing a new paper on demographic trends in academic philosophy for The Philosopher's Magazine: 33% of non-Hispanic White bachelor's degree recipients in philosophy are women (averaging over the most recent three years), while 46% of non-Hispanic Black bachelor's degree recipients are women. That is, if you look just at non-Hispanic White students, the gender ratio in philosophy is 2:1 men to women, while if you look just at non-Hispanic Black students, it's nearly 1:1. The result is highly statistically significant: non-Hispanic White 4674/14032 vs. non-Hispanic Black 579/1264, z = 8.6, p < .001.
I find this interesting and surprising. I welcome conjectures about the possible explanation in the comments. It is definitely not the case, as I have sometimes heard suggested, that non-Hispanic White women are proportionately represented in philosophy, at least at this level. Non-Hispanic White women constitute 32% of bachelor's degree recipients across all majors, and 30% of the U.S. general population, but only 20% of bachelor's degree recipients in philosophy.
Of course, as these numbers also suggest, non-Hispanic Black students remain underrepresented among philosophy majors overall (6%, excluding students who aren't permanent residents or whose race/ethnicity is unknown), compared to bachelor's degree recipients across all majors (10%) and to the U.S. general population (13%).
Looking at the other race/ethnicity categories that NCES makes available, non-Hispanic Asian, Non-Hispanic Multiracial, Hispanic (any race), and nonresident aliens show a similar tendency toward greater gender parity in philosophy than non-Hispanic White students (all p values < .001):
- non-Hispanic Asian philosophy BA recipients 44% women (708/1598);
- non-Hispanic multiracial philosophy BA recipients 40% women (441/1097);
- Hispanic philosophy BA recipients 39% women (1234/3132);
- non-resident alien BA recipients 44% women (545/1239).
However, Native American / Alaska Native and Native Hawaiian / Other Pacific Islander (non-Hispanic) showed proportions closer to those for non-Hispanic White students, though the numbers are too small for any confident conclusions: 36% (32/88) and 30% (13/44), respectively.
I guessed and googled, the phrase - "Women Rising" as maybe on topic to your (women's) "demographic trends in academic philosophy" - because I was affected by my three older sisters in the 1940s-1950s in learning to respect their life choices as time has gone on...
ReplyDelete...So I have no real knowledge of "Women Rising", but in just a little reading about them, I would think their over 100 year history would a boon to expressing and increasing women philosophers participation in "demographic trends in academic philosophy"...
and again thanks for the good reads...
Could be related to the so-called "gender-equality paradox" in which, supposedly, countries which are thought to be more egalitarian on gender issues have bigger gaps between male and female participation in STEM fields than countries that are thought to be less egalitarian. Note, though, that some people have contested this finding.
ReplyDelete2/3 of Black BA recipients are women. As such, gender "parity" among Black philosophy majors would arguably be 1:2 men to women, not 1:1. Though frankly, insofar as any of this is normative, I find focusing on the demographics of philosophy majors, etc. odd. Since most students don't double-major, if the proportion of women that major in philosophy is too low, that means that the proportion of women in some other major is too high. So which major has too many women?
ReplyDeleteMy last comment (“2/3…”) was unnecessarily snarky. Sorry. So, let me state it a little differently. The impression I get is that increasing the proportion of women that major in philosophy is construed as a victory for justice over injustice. However, what women major in is (predominantly) a zero-sum game. I presume that if it turned out that increases in the number of women in philosophy only benefited institutional philosophy, and only at the expense of, say, institutional psychology, then that would be problematic or at least not nearly the victory for justice that some might have thought they were getting. The goal should be increasing the number of women majoring in philosophy who would have majored in philosophy but for some expected injustice or harm or something of that sort and are now majoring in philosophy because of its elimination. Maybe that’s what changes in raw proportions is tracking, but do we have good reason for thinking that’s the case? For instance, if an outreach effort convinces a woman to major in philosophy instead of pre-med, who is that a victory for? Given the job market, if she continues in philosophy, there's a decent chance that convincing her to major in philosophy would make her tremendously worse off.
ReplyDeleteThanks, all. The normative questions are tricky! I don't think universal parity for all races and genders is what we ought to expect even in a perfectly just and well-structured society. Regardless of how the normative issues play out, I think it's useful to look at empirically what is the case.
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