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Data on the “gender situation” in philosophy…

Brian Leiter

…and a somewhat odd interpretation of it by Prof. Schwitzgebel, but it could be I am misunderstanding the data presented.  Looking at data on PhDs awarded to women in philosophy, engineering, and physical sciences, he writes:

The overall trend is clear: Although philosophy's percentages are currently similar to the percentages in engineering and physical sciences, the trend in philosophy has flattened out in the 21st century, while engineering and the physical sciences continue to make progress toward gender parity. All the broad areas show roughly linear upward trends, except for the humanities which appears to have flattened at approximately parity.

But what the chart shows is that engineering and physical sciences started well below philosophy in percentage of PhDs earned by women, and the physical sciences have finally caught up to philosophy, while engineering still lags behind philosophy, but has improved over the time period examined.  Only if engineering and the physical sciences continue to award more PhDs to women going forward would Schwitzgebel's interpretation make sense.   As of now, it may be that all three fields have or will plateau in the 25-30% range.  Am I misreading his data?

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6 responses to “Data on the “gender situation” in philosophy…”

  1. Eddy Nahmias

    You're not misreading the data. You're just wondering if the trends in physical sciences and engineering will continue upward or not. Eric is suggesting there is no evidence of a flattening in those fields, while there is in philosophy. Hence, his next paragraph:

    "These data speak against two reactions that I have sometimes heard to Carolyn's and my work on gender disparity in philosophy. One reaction is "well, that just shows that philosophy is sociologically more like engineering and the physical sciences than we might have previously thought". Another is "although philosophy has recently stalled in its progress toward gender parity, that is true in lots of other disciplines as well". Neither claim appears to be true."

    We could wait another ten years to see if the other fields have also stalled (and to see if philosophy 'unstalls'). Or we could make some more efforts to attract a more diverse range of undergrads to philosophy and then try not to drive them away.

    BL COMMENT: No one proposed a choice between waiting versus recruiting more women to the field! The point is we don't know whether philosophy is the only field to have "stalled" since the examples given are fields that have done even less well than philosophy and may well stall when they get to philosophy's level. That's what I found puzzling.

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  2. Keith Whittington

    His point makes sense to me. The issue that blog post focuses on is trends over time, not current levels, and while all fields have seen an increase in the proportion of women over the past few decades, that growth trajectory has flattened out in philosophy (and it would appear the humanities generally) while it has not yet flattened out in other fields.

    Of course, as the financial advising commercials say, past performance may not predict future results. Maybe all these trajectories change in coming years, but if current trends hold the percentage of women in engineering will soon exceed the percentage in philosophy.

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  3. anon2

    To me, the data show that the percentage of women taking PhDs in philosophy in the past 25 years (since roughly 1991) has leveled out, whereas there's no such leveling trend in evidence for engineering or physical sciences. The overall percentage of PhDs going to women has continued to rise, so not only has philosophy leveled off, it's not keeping up with aggregate trends in the gender composition of research doctorates. Put differently, relative to the average PhD field, gender parity in philosophy has gotten worse since 1991.

    I suppose one could argue that some natural ceiling on the percentage of women in philosophy, engineering, and physical sciences, and then claim that philosophy hit that ceiling in 1991 whereas the other two fields took or are taking longer. But, you'd have to tell a convincing story for why we should believe there's a natural ceiling on the percentage of women in philosophy that it hit in 1991, and that is at a level less than their representation among all PhDs or among BA recipients in Philosophy or among all BA recipients, depending on how far back you think the pipeline goes).

    Or, you could look at these data and ask, "why has philosophy stalled in absolute terms and fallen in relative terms since 1991"?

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  4. Nope

    Schwitzgebel also put this information up at NewAPPS — http://www.newappsblog.com/2016/05/the-gender-situation-is-different-in-philosophy.html — and an exchange in the comments is related to your question:

    "I'm curious about the AIC stats (and root mean square error) for linear vs. quadratic regressions for each of the broad fields. Specifically, I'm not confident based on visual inspection alone that physical science hasn't leveled off."

    "Eric Schwitzgebel said…
    Right, I only did the AIC stats for philosophy, comparing the linear and quadratic fits. It's possible nonlinear fits are also good matches for the other areas too.

    To do a rigorous statistical comparison between the areas, I might want to convert from raw percentages to odds ratios, and I'd have to think about what to do with percentages over 50%, assuming that 50% is the parity target. In any case, with the large numbers involved, it would be surprising if the visually evident differences, in both slope and percentage, weren't statistically significant by any reasonable measure.

    If the physical sciences have slowed, it still seems the case both that the increase is greater than in philosophy and the slope steeper over the period from the 1990s to the present. Maybe if we just look at 2000-2014 there is no difference in slope between philosophy and the physical sciences. That could be interesting as a post-hoc test."

    My reading of that response is that in fact (unlike what his post says at the beginning) it may be the case that the physical sciences are also flattening, though it's possible they'll flatten at a rate higher than that of philosophy if trends continue.

    That said, the ratios for all of these fields are indicative of systemic barriers to gender equality (though hopefully lessening ones).

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  5. Carnap

    Are the reported ratios for social and life sciences indicative of "systematic barriers to gender equality?"

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  6. Eric Schwitzgebel

    Thanks for the link, Brian! I've been in Hong Kong and only noticed it now. Sure, your interpretation is consistent with the data, and also (I think) with what I say — though my emphasis is on the disappointing flattening in philosophy. It could be that physical sciences and engineering will flatten too, now that they've hit about philosophy's percentage. We'll see how things go in the next 10-15 years.

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