As is well-known, mainstream Anglophone philosophy has tended to be overwhelmingly non-Hispanic White -- though there's some evidence of recent changes in the student population which might start to trickle into the professoriate. Generally, the higher the level of prestige, the more skewed the ratios. In my 2024 analysis of the 376 most-cited authors in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, I found that women or nonbinary authors constituted 12% of the list and Hispanic or non-White authors constituted 3%.
How well represented are these groups among authors of the 253 most-cited works in the Stanford Encyclopedia? Here, the skew is even more extreme. Of the 265 included work-author combinations (almost all of the included works are solo-authored), I count 24 works (9%) by women, 2 (1%) non-binary authored works (both by Judith Butler), one (0.4%) by a Hispanic/Latino person (Linda Martín Alcoff), one (0.4%) by an Asian (Jaegwon Kim), and none by any authors that are known by me to identify or be perceived as Black or African American, American Indian / Alaska Native, or Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander (using the race/ethnicity categories of the US Census). Corrections welcome if I'm misclassified anyone!
Here it is as a pie chart. If you squint, you might be able to see the lines for the Hispanic or non-White groups.
1 comment:
A little bit of hillbilly folk philosophy here. Sorta. If, and only if, we've recognized that someone always gets a smaller piece of the pie, and, there have not been the shared dividends we might expect to effect improvement(s), what does that say about our intention and committment? Over decades, there has been proverbial *lip service* paid to equality of several stripes. Including race and sex. There are, and have been, few female philosophers who made that difference that made a difference. I can think of three, two of whom I have read.
Not many black philosophers, either. So, is philosophy another example of a white man's club? There are many of them, including religion. Take your pick, and make your own assessment... Some do not get any pie, at all, do they?
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