Sharon Crasnow has put up a report of the Committee on the Status of Women’s meeting in Pasadena. Have a look here.
International Assoc of Women Phil in Seoul March 31, 2008
Dear Colleagues,You are cordially invited to participate in the thirteenth International Association of Women Philosophers Conference. It will be held in Seoul, Korea from July 27th to 29th, 2008. It would be greatly appreciated if you could inform of the conference to your colleagues and encourage their active participation.The theme of IAPh 2008 is “Multiculturalism and Feminism.” We strongly encourage women scholars’ contribution from diverse cultural and traditional background. Proposal submission due is April 30, 2008. More specific information will be found in the following website. http://www.iaph2008.org.
The Conference will consist of five sessions: plenary session, general session, special session, student session, round tables.l The plenary session consists of key note speeches on “multiculturalism and feminism” by four prominent women philosophers.l The general session is an opportunity in which women philosophers from different backgrounds address and discuss various issues and difficulties which contemporary women are facing.l The special session, prepared by Korean Women’s Development Institute, consists of invited lectures on “women, work, and family.” Invited lecturers from various traditions will enlighten us to identify women’s issues which originate from particular political, cultural, and religious context.l The student session is prepared in order to provide graduate student with the opportunity to present their papers. Those who participate in the students’ session will be provided with free meals and accommodation during the conference.l Round tables are the opportunity in which women philosophers exchange their thoughts and ideas on various issues and challenges against women and share their perspective.
Based on the visions, ideas and opinions obtained throughout the Conference, we shall seek the way to promote women’s condition and bring out better future for women.We sincerely hope that you will join us in making IAPh 2008 conference a success. We look forward to welcoming you to Seoul and to IAPh 2008.Sincerely,Heisook Kim, Ph.D.Dean of Scranton College Prof. of Philosophy, Ewha Womans University Seoul 120-750, Korea 822-3277-6590, 2211 (office)
8211-346-9939 (cell)
“Philosophy as a Blood Sport” March 30, 2008
I thought I had read this paper by now emeritus Prof. Normal Swartz, and perhaps you actually have. It does more than fill-in the details its descriptive title suggests. It raises the hugely important question of whether the drawing of metaphorical blood is a turn-off for students, and perhaps particularly for women students.
Another section has readers’ comments that came in over about 7 years. Mostly they confirm both the facts and the concern of the paper, though a well-known feminist philosopher reminds us that some women are relieved at not having to be nice.
On thinking about this, I’ve started wondering about what seem to me related questions: Is academic philosophy as it has been known in Anglophone countries over the last 100 years a vital professional field? In being a blood sport, is philosophy just a sport? Is a field which prizes devastating challenges to its own heroes – and the drawing of blood from acolytes – suffocatingly narcissitic? Is the increasing engagement of young philosopher with empirical fields in fact a deeply motivated challenge to philosophy’s self-absorption?
What do you think?
Silencing and Forced Marriage March 28, 2008
A deeply depressing story. 12 year old Ruksana complained to UK police when her parents said they were going to force her into an unwanted marriage. They came to her house to discuss it with the whole family, and told her not to worry– thus alerting her parents that she had talked to the police, whereupon they moved her elsewhere. She complained again, with a similar response, and eventually was forced into a marriage, forced out of education, and raped. As she says:
“White kids can call Childline and they get listened to – but for Asian children it’s thought of as wrong to complain.”
Ruksana is, however, hopeful (let’s hope she’s right):
Because of the publicity about forced marriages I think they would take you a bit more seriously now.
For the nerds among you, there’s arguably both locutionary and perlocutionary silencing going on indicated in Ruksana’s first quote. Asians don’t think they should complain (locutionary), and they aren’t taken seriously when they do (perlocutionary). Depending your views on felicity conditions for complaining, there may also be illocutionary silencing going on. For a quick intro to these silencing issues, see here. (Thanks, Jender-Parents!)
Neuromythology? March 25, 2008
Scientific research arguably involves a high capacity for systematic thinking, where a love of discovering repeated patterns seems to be a help. In addition, science often requires long periods of solitary reflection or immersion in the labs, apart from partner and family.
Why are there many more men in this life than women? Is it a matter of socialization, genetics or both?
There’s a well-known answer, based to a large extent on Baron-Cohen’s work described here. And the answer goes as follows: It is first argued that the characteristics of scientific inquiry also show up in some conditions of neuro-difference, particularly in people on the autism spectrum. But such people are MUCH more likely to be men. So it seems reasonable to think that autism is a variant on the average male brain. And that leaves women outside this cluster of the systematicizing people who can tolerate relatively restricted social lives. And outside science.
Is this MYTH or more like fact?
It turns out that there’s another way to explain the prevalence of men among autists without committing oneself to anything more about the male brain. And it is this: Most men have one X chromosone from their mothers and a Y one from their fathers, while most women have an X from each. That means in general that men carry their mother’s and not their father’s X chromosones. Suppose something that prevents or mitigates autism is carried on the paternal X chromosone. Then women will get it and men won’t, which means that few women will have autism compared to men.
And in fact Turner’s syndrome, which characterizes women with a single full X chromosone, tends to be accompanied by autism when the chromosone is the mother’s, but not when it is the father’s. This is some comfirmation for the paternal-prevention hypothesis.
Given such competing hypotheses, we are still in the land of conjecture when we talk about autism as a form of ‘the male mind.’ And when we analyse or defend social policy or practice on such a basis, we should worry seriously that we are enacting a myth.
How, one might ask, could a man have acquired a non-preventing X chromosone from his mother, but pass on a preventive one. Understanding this really takes us into the difficult literature on the ways in which genes depend on the environment of the chromosone for their expression. But the question is really well studied, and a good place to see it is to search under the names “Creswell and Skuse,” who apparently initiated by study of Turner’s and the occurrence of autism as genetically linked to the X chromozone.
I’m very indebted to Jamie Ward’s The Student’s Guide to Cognitive Neuroscience, pages 323-324, which has been an invaluable text for a class I teach.
“I want a metal doctor!” March 25, 2008
Jender-Son is 2 and a half. He loves to describe everything, and is very fond of adjectives. It’s never ‘Oooh– cup!’, but always ‘Oooh– big big red and blue cup’. We’ve always thought this was a thoroughly good thing. Until today, when I was getting ready to take him to the doctor. Coming out of his room he said “I want a blue doctor!”. I told him there weren’t any blue doctors. Same with red doctors. Then: ”I want a yellow doctor!” Oof. I began to realise where this might lead, thinking of the Indian doctor we were about to see. What could possibly be more embarrassing, I thought to myself with horror, than a gleeful toddler yelling “Oooh– brown doctor!” I found out in the next instant, as he began shouting “I want a white doctor! I want a white doctor!”. I started trying to explain to him that people get upset when you talk about what colour they are. And thinking frantically about how to explain this further. Then I breathed a sigh of relief as he began shouting over and over “I want a metal doctor!” But it got me thinking about how tricky teaching all this to kids can be. He’ll want to know why it’s great to talk about colours of everything but people, and I’ll need to find a way of explaining it while also making it clear that colour of people in *some* sense doesn’t matter at all. But also that it does matter, because for a long time people have assigned significance to it, and that affects people’s lives in huge ways, and…. Why doesn’t he just ask me where babies come from?? That conversation would be easy!
Philosophy’s sexism and the Pacific APA March 24, 2008
The women are counting. We came out of sessions packed with white men invited to speak on topics on which women have a lot to say. We noticed edited publications which – no surprise here – had a much smaller proportion of women than are actually in the field, even the specific field. We discussed how many very bright women are at institutions that don’t match their considerable merits.
The program as a whole merits more attention, though, than I’ve yet been able to give it. There may have been more women on it than has been usual; there were certainly many more than there would have been 20 years ago.
So have things changed for women in philosophy? As one wise woman noted, many young women today in fine graduate schools may have a sense of entitlement that simply was not there until recently. But she had noticed, as others have, that though the realization that there can be very talented women in philosophy appears to have been embraced, it pretty much only applies to young women, not us middle-agers. I had thought this was one of those quirky failures to generalize. That is, if the word went out in 1990 that women could do philosophy, the guys mistakenly thought this was about women graduating in 1990 and afterwards. But she had the better explanation: We don’t count because we’re not sexy.
So we’ll see. It’s been a cliche in the sciences that many young women think they have an equal chance until they get to tenure. Then reality sets in, possibly along with one’s getting to ”a certain age.” In later discussions at the APA, women pointed out that so much philosophy is done in liberal arts colleges, and the brightest women may survive happily there, even if research institutions consume the young.
So: Interesting hypotheses; it’s a bit like watching the lions and the Christians. We should do more than hope that young women have better odds for developing nationally recognized careers than earlier generations of women have had. Let’s take some action, at least to the point of mentoring where we can.
Readers of this post might find the fuller description of the APA given here interesting. Thanks, Sharon, for the reference to the Sunday Cats.
Sunday feline metaphor for the APA, Pacific Division March 23, 2008
Well, this is how it feels.
UPDATE: Many thanks for the expressions of concern, but it really wasn’t THAT bad. The kittens are just playing, right? And some things important and valuable at least to me occurred. But I had some illuminating discussions about the morphing of sexism in the philosophy community, of which more later. (And no one worry: no attributions will be given..)
Neurosexism March 21, 2008
Cordelia Fine has an article in the first issue of a new, free, online journal, Neuroethics; it’s entitled, “Will Working Mothers’ Brains Explode? The Popular New Genre of Neurosexism.” We’ve blogged about neurosexism before in a post about single-sex education, and this article covers some of the same issues from a more general perspective.
One book she discusses is Simon Baron-Cohen’s 2003 book, The essential difference: Men, women and the extreme male brain. (London: Allen Lane.) This is one of those books that celebrates the fact that, as a matter of biological destiny, men do important things with science and public life while women take care of social relations. Too many people take it at its word, no doubt in part because Baron-Cohen has done a lot of highly respected work on ASD, the autism spectrum disorder. In his view, autism is a manifestation of an extreme male brain, and so…. .
(In thinking about this, I’m reminded of my son’s nursery school, which forbid the children from playing Mommy and Daddy (or: cook-comforter and consumer). So the children played a form of Bambi, with the boys wounded deer and the girls nurses. One suspects Baron-Cohen’s more literally adult fantasy is scientist and wife. Children: there are alternatives!)
One of the issues is the responsibility of journalists in writing about what various people are doing with supposedly “the results” in cognitive neuroscience:
Mark Liberman has suggested that “misleading appeals to the authority of ‘brain research’ have become the modern equivalent of out-of-context scriptural fragments.” [18]. Noting, along with Rivers and Barnett [19], that baseless neuroscientific ‘facts’ about gender differences are already having an impact on educational policies, for example, he argues that journalists have a real responsibility to fact-check the accuracy of neuroscientific claims. The need for journalists to take on this responsibility takes on an extra import when one considers our susceptibility to poor neuroscientific explanations, together with the way that biological accounts of gender, and the stereotypes about male versus female abilities that they promote, can measurably alter our beliefs, self-identity and abilities.
In response to the earlier post here on arguments for single-sex schools based on alleged findings in neuroscience, smatty referred to a Language Log post, Blinding us with Science, from which the Liberman quote above comes. It contains a number of references that are very useful if you are trying to think through the issues involved in evaluating the claims in favor of single sex schools.
[Thanks to JW for the neurosexism reference.]
War in Iraq and women’s rights March 21, 2008
War is no fun for anyone. The war in Iraq has now been going on for five years. Somewhere along the way, we were told that a good reason for going to war was to liberate Iraqi women. But instead, things have got worse. Read more here.
Conference: Embodiment and Identity March 20, 2008
Keynote speaker: Linda Alcoff
May 22nd – 23rd 2008
This conference aims to explore the role the body plays in constituting aspects of our individual and social identity. The claim that biology fixes identity has been hotly contested in recent decades, but its apparent abandonment has led to intense theoretical debate over the role of the body in constituting both individual subjectivity and categories of social identity. We will be focusing particularly on gendered, cultural and racial identity, disability and identity, and identities reached by degrees of bodily modification. In each case attention will be paid to the role of social others in constituting the meaning and recognition bestowed on bodily physiognomies. The common assumption that such categories of identity are required for social participation, political agency and constructions of subjectivity, will be subjected to critical scrutiny.
Conference webpage, including booking form, can be found here.
Gender Pay Gap Triples After 30 March 19, 2008
Some dramatic figures which illustrate phenomena probably already well-known to many readers, from the BBC.
Mr Barber [General Secretary of the UK's Trade Union Congress] said: “We all expect our wages to increase as our careers progress. But women’s wages start to stagnate as early as their 30s.”Despite girls outperforming boys at school and at university, too many employers are still failing to make use of women’s skills.”The TUC study found that women of all ages earn less than men and that woman are twice as likely as men to be poor…Fawcett’s campaigns officer Kat Banyard said: “At every level in UK workplaces women are being paid less than men.”The paucity of senior flexible roles and the long working hours culture shuts women out of the boardroom and forces then into lower-paid, lower-status jobs when they have children.”
One thing I like about the TUC approach is the way that it highlights both the injustice to women and the loss to employers. Students all too often react to figures like these by insisting that it would be too impractical for employers to accommodate the needs to parents with heavy childcare responsibilities. It’s well worth noting what employers miss out on by not doing so.
Minister for women Harriet Harman said the government planned “tough new measures” in an Equality Bill to be published later this year.
Hope these measures really are both tough and new.(Thanks, Jender-Parents!)
Sadie Magazine March 18, 2008
Thought it might be nice to have something hopeful about gender and culture after Monkey’s well-justified Rants at the TV…. Reader Josie recently told us about Sadie Magazine, a new magazine for teenage girls and young women. So I went over to have a look– at first glance, your typical teen girl mag. Lots of pink, an ‘I heart/I hate’ section, a cooking section, etc. A very slightly closer look revealed something much more interesting than that first impression: a rave review of a book about trans teens, a DIY section to go with the cooking section, an article on Cuban women rappers…. And ‘I heart/I hate’ contained an article about the awkwardness of seeking sexual health services in a small town. My feminist grandmother would SO have bought me a subscription to this when I was younger. But wait! It’s even better than that– it’s web-based and free. So tell anyone who might be interested. And they’re also soliciting contributions.
Lingerie Superbowl March 17, 2008
More ranting at TV from Monkey.
Football. It doesn’t matter which kind – soccer, superbowl, or Aussie rules – it’s jealously guarded as the preserve of males, both to watch and to play. Women – we all know – can’t kick a ball, can’t catch a ball, throw like girls, and don’t know the offside rule. Well, all that has now changed, thanks to the LIngerie Superbowl. As the name suggests, this is football, played by women, dressed in their underwear. Yes, you heard me – gaze at a pitch full of near-naked beauties grappling with a ball. You might even get to see one of the players have her bra ripped off in the struggle, and run down the field, tits a-bounce, to score a topless touchdown. (This happened last week.) Would someone like to tell me when normal telly turned into one long soft porn spectacle aimed at the heterosexual male (or some socially constructed version thereof)? The equation WOMAN = SEX is writ large all across our screens, no matter which channel we turn to. You wanna be a footballer, little girl? Fine, but you’ve got to have model looks, bronzed skin, large breasts, long shiny hair, and you’ve got to play in your undies. You want to be a singer? Ok, but you need to take off most of your clothes and writhe around like a stripper. Want to be a news presenter? Sure – just keep yourself looking young and lovely. No-one wants to see some old hag reading the news. And don’t get me started on ‘Girls Gone Wild’. Hasn’t anyone heard of female talent? – Oh hang on, that means ‘attractive women’ (at least in some parts of the UK). One step forward, two steps backwards, people.
That’s Amore March 17, 2008
The first in a series of posts where Monkey rants at TV.
I’ve watched my fair share of dating shows over the years and none has really qualified as highbrow entertainment, but MTV’s latest offering – That’s Amore – really breaks through the wrong side of the trash barrier. It’s been a while since I’ve seen anything this offensive (and as a seasoned nethead, I see a lot of offensive things). The concept will be familiar to those acquainted with your average dating show: X number of attractive young women move into a big house where they vy for the attention of one man, and perform tasks to either win a date or be removed from the competition. The number of contestants is whittled down week by week, until only one attractive young woman remains, and wins the man. Or some money. Or some money to go on a date with the man. So far, so run-of-the-mill. But That’s Amore takes it to a whole other level. Treading a fine line between mainstream TV entertainment and soft porn (oh wait, there’s still a difference?), That’s Amore is less dating show and more Lads’ Mag wankfest. The young women on That’s Amore embody the worst of a certain kind of stereotypically feminine behaviour. They shriek at each other, call each other ‘bitch’, say mean things about each other behind each other’s backs, all the while trying their hardest to impress ‘Domenico’ – the man-prize on offer at the end of the competition. The ‘challenges’ set before the bitching beauties include such gems as ‘dressing up in a sexy French maid-style outfit and cooking a chicken’, then ‘cleaning the kitchen as sexily as possible’ (cue, lots of pouting, and crawling on work surfaces with arses thrust skyward), and ‘diving into a pool of meatballs and spaghetti whilst wearing bikini bottoms and t-shirt’, which initiated a wrestling match between two of the contestants. Determined to win Domenico’s affections, a few of them have resorted to dirty tactics, which include waiting until all the other women have left the vast bedroom they share, then sneaking into Domenico’s sleeping-quarters for a morning romp in his bed. Perhaps these people are not real. Perhaps they are all actors. (I fervently wish that were so.) But real or staged, the show is a disgrace. We like to think our behaviour is freely chosen, but – heavy issues about what counts as freedom aside – that’s not strictly true. More often than not, we do what the cathode ray tube tells us. If TV says it’s normal to do x, we do x. I, for one, would prefer TV not to be telling women that it’s normal or ok to pitch yourself against other women in a degrading scuffle for male attention. I would also prefer TV not to be telling women that the way to win the man is to take part in some plastic, Hefnerised version of female sexuality that involves sexy maid outfits, bronzed tans, and housework. Finally, TV, if you’re listening, you can stop telling men to expect women to engage in bikini-clad catfights to win their affections. Life is not one big scene from Porky’s. Jeesh, people.
Val Plumwood Memorial March 17, 2008
Friends and admirers of Val Plumwood might like to know that a blogsite for her has been started with updates re her funeral and memorial service arrangements (she still has not been buried due to complications surrounding private burials), and spaces for people to post tributes, memories, and information about her work.
“Postfeminism and Other Fairy Tales” March 16, 2008
This interesting article in the New York Times is well worth the read. The author, Kate Zernike, tries to put together the impact of both the mysogynistic attacks on Hillary and the travesty of Spitzler on generational divides among feminists. She suggests many young women have thought that the US was beyond gender discrimination. And it is true that some women seem to have gotten the message that the power and responsibiity is theirs, a belief less for their convenience, surely, than for that of a discriminatory culture that does not want the blame. (I remember uphappily a meeting at which a local young female chamber of commerce administrator insisted that women professors themselves were responsible for the fact that women hold almost no academic leadership positions in our university. “You need to work on yourselves,” she asserted. Ouch!)
Is that changing?
Suzanne B. Goldberg, a law professor at Columbia and director of its sexuality and gender law clinic, called the current climate “a perfect storm.”
…
“I’m not such a Mars-Venus person but this is one of those moments where gender is at least a partial explanation, it affects how people hear campaign rhetoric, how people see political downfalls,” Ms. Goldberg said. “Even people who were unwilling to see it before are more likely to acknowledge the pervasiveness of sex stereotypes.”
…
Younger women, for their part, are starting to have what Ms. Goldberg calls “the aha moment” — even if it doesn’t put them in Mrs. Clinton’s column, as some of the welter of commentary last week found.
Why don’t younger women see what Kath Pollitt is described as articulating? That is,
“The hysterical insults flung at Hillary Clinton are just a franker, crazier version of the everyday insults — shrill, strident, angry, ranting, unattractive — that are flung at any vaguely liberal mildly feminist woman who shows a bit of spirit and independence,” she [Pollitt] wrote, “who puts herself out in the public realm, who doesn’t fumble and look up coyly from underneath her hair and give her declarative sentences the cadence of a question.”
…
“Every woman I know who calls herself a feminist, or is even just doing well, especially in a field in which men also contend,” Ms. Pollitt wrote, “deals with some version of this.”
We’re offered a dismal explanation:
Noreen Malone on The XX Factor, the Slate magazine blog written by women wrote] “The most powerful people in the world are old white men and pretty young women.”
“During my supposedly post-feminist lifetime, the women who’ve created the biggest stir are the young women who’ve ruined the careers of powerful old men,” she wrote.
Some power.
Am I missing something? March 15, 2008
As readers may know, I’ve been very impressed by Barack Obama (despite also being repelled by some of the coverage Clinton has received). Among many necessary conditions for my being impressed by him is the fact that he has good positions on reproductive rights. Imagine my surprise, then, at being completely unable to find any mention of abortion or reproductive rights whatsoever in the issues section of his website. If this is right, it’s deeply strange, and surely counter-productive, especially since we’re still at the primary stage rather than the mandatory general election shift-to center. I very much hope someone will tell me I’m wrong about this!
