Guest-blogging at Leiter Reports, Rebecca Kukla identifies the following criteria as necessary for a philosophical sub-discipline to be truly woman-friendly:
(1) There are a sizable number of leaders and up-and-coming stars in the
field who are women, regardless of whether they take up feminist
issues, and (2) it has a culture of taking women seriously, treating
them respectfully, and including them in social networks and
professional opportunities. If feminist approaches to the field
are helpful, then also (3) there is a thriving community of feminist
scholars who have the means to network with one another and exchange
ideas and support, and (4) feminist insights and approaches are not
relegated to a ghetto but incorporated, as appropriate, into the
mainstream – anyone can draw upon feminist insights and approaches
without having to join a dedicated ‘feminist philosopher of x camp’, and
these insights and approaches are recognized as (sometimes) helpful and
philosophically legitimate. Furthermore, (5) the subdiscipline as a
whole does not presume that all of its female members do feminist
philosophy, and (6) the women in the field who do feminist work and
those who do not are friendly towards and in solidarity with one
another.
In a future (I hope) post, I am going to try to provide some quantitative data that will be relevant to evaluating how well the sub-sub-discipline that is empirically-informed philosophy of mind does with regard to the first two of these measures, but in meanwhile I wonder: what do readers think of these criteria as ways of determining woman-friendliness? To the extent that you think they are good, how well do you think empirically-informed philosophy of mind does at meeting them? Alternatively, do you think that some of these criteria are misguided or irrelevant, or that some possible criteria that should be included are missing?
The comments on this post are open for discussion of these issues. I have also created an online survey that attempts to measure popular opinion in a more systematic way. Here is the link: https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/DT68M9Z. Please, take a few minutes to fill it out!
John, thanks for raising this important issue. I hope our subdiscipline is woman-friendly, but I’d love to know more about it, and in any case we should all strive to make it as woman-friendly as possible. Needless to say, women who work in this area are always very welcome to contribute to this blog.