“Our app tried 2 show the humorous lengths guys go 2 pick up women. We apologize if it’s in bad taste & appreciate your feedback.”
For details, see here. (Thanks, Andrew!)
CFP: Changing Families in a Changing World. October 16, 2009
The Centre for Research on Families and Relationships (CRFR) is holding their 3rd International Conference on 16th-18th June 2010 entitled Changing Families in a Changing World.
We live in times of enormous change on personal and global levels. Families are more diverse and more likely to change, with divorce, separation, stepfamilies, international adoption, increased life expectancy in some parts of the world and decreased in others, and a growing divide between rich and poor at local and global levels all becoming more prevalent. At the same time global recession, uncertainty about the impact of environmental degradation and increase religious and civil unrest provide a changing backdrop against which families live their lives.
What happens to families in this changing word? How do they deal with the way in which global changes impact upon their lives? What do we know about these changes and how they play out in and across different parts of the globe?
CRFR’s international conference will address these issues and invites paper and workshop proposals.
Jon Stewart takes on 30 Republicans who voted against the Franken rape amendment October 16, 2009
Update: it seems that this vid can only be viewed in the US – sorry UK FP-ers!
Remember this hideous story of the KBR/Haliburton employee whose contract forbade her seeking justice for being gangraped and then locked in a storage container for 24 hours? Al Franken passed a law to deny federal contracts to companies that punish employees who complain of rape of discrimination. Well, as the title of this post suggests, here’s Jon Stewart taking on 30 Republicans who voted against Franken’s amendment.
Blog Action Day 2009: Climate Change October 15, 2009
I know, it’s a fine line between activism and slacktivism, and I try to be leery of “let’s all blog” movements. However, even the Prime Minister is blogging about climate change today as part of Blog Action Day. So, feminist philosophers, feel free to post a comment in response to the following question: How have feminist philosophers contributed to the literature on climate change? I’d like to kick it off by citing Victoria Davion’s article, “Feminist Perspectives on Global Warming, Genocide, and Card’s Theory of Evil,” in the recent special issue of Hypatia on Claudia Card’s work. Davion applies Card’s discussion of genocide as social death to groups such as, e.g., Artic village residents who must relocate, arguing that failure to help such groups maintain their unique cultural identities contributes to their social death.
Ralph Lauren, at it again October 14, 2009
I say he likes aliens. Mr Jender says he spends to much time playing with Bratz dolls. What do YOU think?
From the always glorious Photoshop Disasters.
I don’t even know what to say October 14, 2009
about Baby Bangs, except perhaps SHE’S NOT A BOY! (because sometimes, pink tutus are simply not enough.)
thanks jdub!
The male philosophical canon October 14, 2009
Brian Leiter has a post up about the Chronicle article JJ posted on yesterday which suggested that the maleness and sexism of the philosophical canon might be contributing to gender imbalance in the profession. He asks what people think of the hypothesis. It would be good for some of us to get in on the comments (though only students are allowed to post anonymously). In particular, Christopher Hitchcock has posted a request for female authors to teach in a particular class: “If I teach an intro M & E class, that focuses on skepticism, knowledge of an external world, etc. with texts like Plato’s cave, Descartes’ meditations, Berkeley, Hume on Induction, ‘Brains in a vat’ and ‘Elusive Knowledge’, are there any recommendations for writings by women that would fit in and be accessible to freshmen?” It would be nice to go offer some suggestions! And also, of course, to contribute to the rest of the discussion.
Ralph Lauren, PR genius October 14, 2009
Remember that hideously photoshopped Ralph Lauren model? Well, last week Ralph Lauren apologised. Which was good. This week, not so good. They’ve fired her, for being too big. (Thanks, Mr Jender!)
In other somehow related news, you might like to know that Christian Leboutin has decided Barbie’s ankles are too fat.
All-female reading lists? October 14, 2009
Brian Weatherson has a nice post up, ruminating on the maleness of reading lists for intro philosophy courses.
… I had the idea the other day of putting together a syllabus for an intro philosophy class that only featured female authors. I’ve seen several such classes with all male reading lists, but I’d never seen an all female one. I’m interested in why so many intro classes in philosophy have an uneven gender balance, and one hypothesis is that (some) women are put off by all-male reading lists.
So I went to a few prominent anthologies used in intro teaching, and thought I’d start making lists of all the papers by women I found in them. I’m really bad at telling which papers will work in intro classes, so I use those big anthologies a lot as a guide to what I can get away with teaching. But I quit fairly soon after I started down that road, because it clearly wasn’t going to help.
All the anthologies I looked at had not a single paper by a woman that wasn’t on ethics. Admittedly I only looked at a handful of readers, and if I’d kept searching I would have found one or two papers by women on areas other than ethics that had been included in the standard readers. But still, I think this is a bit terrible, especially in readers with 100 or so articles.
So instead I started thinking about what an intro ethics course with only female authors would look like. And since there are lots of readers designed just for ethics courses, I thought they would be a better place to get started.
Read on, to find what he discovered.
Among other things, Weatherson’s tale shows the importance of this project.
Wanted: Female Philosophers: update October 13, 2009
Yesterday the Chronicle of Higher Education put out a very useful special supplement on diversity. One section’s title starts with the words above. Unfortunately, my password is not working and they haven’t sent me its replacement yet. But even without a subscription, you can search their data base on race and ethnicity in US universities. You can also buy a web pass. Or read the first para of some articles.
Below is the first para for philosophy. It is a vivid reminder of the fact that it is not just female grad students and PhD’s who are losers in the situation.
The study of philosophy is a pillar of a liberal education. It is an opportunity for students to examine their lives and deepen their knowledge of existence. It would be hard to find a philosophy student who has escaped the very definition of the term itself, which translates from the Greek to mean the love of wisdom. Yet, for a field so profoundly shaped by understanding human experience, it is surprising that its students are hardly representative of humankind.
Of course, one has to ask about whether the characterization above does fit philosophy today. I should think that for at least many of us it does fit the philosophy we most value. What do you think?
BTW, there’s some indication that the article tries to give advice about diversifying. If you can get access to it, please let us know if there’s something useful.
Update: Many thanks to Jen, who put the whole article incomments below, but I’m concerned we’re violating copyright, so we may have to remove some of it. In any case, I think the central point of the long article is in the passage just below. The author has said the male-dominated canon is a big factor. Then she writes:
… one explanation for why there are more women in history and English[which also have male dominated canons] is that researchers and teachers in those fields have taken steps to offset the negative consequences of a male-dominated canon. Numerous English scholars, for instance, bring a critical approach to the interpretation of patriarchal texts, while also raising awareness of the literary works by women. Similarly, many historians reframe the annals by attending to the historical contributions of all members of society—including women.
It is also important to keep in mind that sexism in the canon has the potential to affect philosophy students to a far greater degree than those of other disciplines. That is because unlike the canonical figures in English and history, those in philosophy are models for philosophy students.
Right Stuff, Wrong Sex October 13, 2009
Mr Jender and J-Bro have both sent me this amazing story, on the women astronauts who very nearly were– way back at the beginning of the space programme.
Imagine if the first person on the moon had proclaimed, “That’s one small step for woman, one giant leap for mankind.”
It could have happened. In the late 1950s, the United States government contemplated training women as astronauts, and newly released medical test results show that they were just as cool and tough as the men who went to the moon.
“They were all extraordinary women and outstanding pilots and great candidates for what was proposed,” said Donald Kilgore, a doctor who evaluated both male and female space flight candidates at the Lovelace Clinic, a mid-century center of aeromedical research. “They came out better than the men in many categories.”
The clinic’s founder, Randy Lovelace, developed the health assessments used to select the Mercury 7 team, and thought that women might make competent astronauts. It was a radical idea for the era. Women’s liberation had just begun to stir, and only a quarter of U.S. women had jobs.
But Lovelace was practical: Women are lighter than men, requiring less fuel to transport them into space. They’re also less prone to heart attacks, and Lovelace considered them better-suited for the claustrophobic isolation of space.
In 1959, Lovelace collaborator Donald Flickinger, an Air Force general and NASA advisor, founded the Women In Space Earliest program in order to test women for their qualifications as astronauts. But the Air Force canned it before testing even started, prompting Lovelace to start the Woman in Space Program.
Nineteen women enrolled in WISP, undergoing the same grueling tests administered to the male Mercury astronauts. Thirteen of them — later dubbed the Mercury 13 — passed “with no medical reservations,” a higher graduation rate than the first male class. The top four women scored as highly as any of the men.
Guest post by Louise Antony October 13, 2009
Dana McCourt, writing in The Edge of the American West, says:
I think the stereotype that contemporary analytic philosophy is just too tough for most women has more to do with how philosophers would like to see themselves rather than anything particular about women’s aptitude….
And adds this speculation:
Moreover, three generations ago I’m sure the same argument could be made about why women simply didn’t choose to become English professors or lawyers or biologists.
Indeed it could – and was! Here’s a letter to the Editor of Harvard Magazine from March of 1944 – a little over three generations ago. Apparently the Great Crimson One was contemplating the audacious step of opening its Law School to women:
To the Editor:
Anything but a misogynist, I hope the Harvard Law School will be kept free and clear of females. Women, God bless ‘em, are out of place in the profession of the Law. They are motivated by intuition – their special prerogative – impulse, and prejudice, all of which are antithetical to that reasoned judgement which must be a prime characteristic of a sound lawyer. Apart from any question of moral character, a good woman cannot be a good lawyer; conversely a good lawyer cannot be a good woman….A she-attorney cannot be the companion man needs and she needs to be.
– Charles L. Griffin, Harvard 1888, Law 1890
Of course, they were just silly-billies back then….
Seeking diversity: another approach October 13, 2009
The following notice is being circulated to the women’s studies faculty at my university (which I’ll call the “XYZ University”).
On October 22nd a Gender Equity Visiting Team from the American Physical Society (APS) will come to the XYZ Physics Department. That team will consist of Prof. Barbara Whitten** (Colorado College), Professor Peter Sheldon (Randolph College) and Sherry Yennello (Texas A&M). The goal for the visit is to try and identify actions that we can take as a physics department to try and improve the situation regarding attracting women to and keeping them in physics as a career. In addition, we need to understand what campus-wide and more general societal issues that we need to be aware of and help address to the extent we can that will facilitate our primary goal.
A small luncheon is planned for the visiting team to meet with physics staff and faculty as well as guests from outside departments. If you are interested in attending this luncheon meeting …
It’s intriguing to think of doing this for philosophy in various countries. What would we need? For starters:
Active interest on the part of departments
A group of advisors with the relevant expertise
Money
Given the discussions here and elsewhere recently, the need for expertise is quite a substantial requirement. It means a good grasp not just of the causes of women’s underrepresentation, but also of the ways to alleviate it. Still, this is something that could be a goal. Or, at the very least, worth thinking about.
**Barbara Witten, if memory serves me correctly, spoke at the first FEMMSS conference.
Another theory bites the dust! October 12, 2009
***POW!! #### BIFF-BAM!! %%%% ZOWEE!!!
You know the good ol’ Simon Baron Cohen theory that males possess analytic superiority as demonstrated by significantly more men at the top in performance on maths tests?
See the abstract/article below (from Richard Zack’s blog)
Janet S. Hyde, and Janet E. Mertz. Gender, culture, and mathematics performance. PNAS vol. 106, no. 22, (June 2, 2009).
Abstract: Using contemporary data from the U.S. and other nations, we address 3 questions: Do gender differences in mathematics performance exist in the general population? Do gender differences exist among the mathematically talented? Do females exist who possess profound mathematical talent? In regard to the first question, contemporary data indicate that girls in the U.S. have reached parity with boys in mathematics performance, a pattern that is found in some other nations as well. Focusing on the second question, studies find more males than females scoring above the 95th or 99th percentile, but this gender gap has significantly narrowed over time in the U.S. and is not found among some ethnic groups and in some nations. Furthermore, data from several studies indicate that greater male variability with respect to mathematics is not ubiquitous. Rather, its presence correlates with several measures of gender inequality. Thus, it is largely an artifact of changeable sociocultural factors, not immutable, innate biological differences between the sexes. Responding to the third question, we document the existence of females who possess profound mathematical talent. Finally, we review mounting evidence that both the magnitude of mean math gender differences and the frequency of identification of gifted and profoundly gifted females significantly correlate with sociocultural factors, including measures of gender equality across nations.
Many thanks, RZ!
Women’s papers for undergraduate teaching October 12, 2009
You know, I’m really struck by what a potentially great point in time this is for tackling the gender gap in philosophy. I just keep hearing about project after project. And here’s another great one:
We are seeking suggestions for papers to include in a database of
women-authored papers that would be suitable for undergraduate teaching. The
database is intended to facilitate the selection of texts written by women
to be included in philosophy undergraduate teaching.The database will be freely accessible online, and is intended to be up and
running by mid-2010. We aim for a pilot version to be ready by the end of
2009.This project is funded by a Macquarie University Competitive Learning and
Teaching Grant, awarded to a team from the Philosophy Department.We are happy to provide more information if that should be useful,
Thanks in advance for your assistance,
Cynthia Townley, Albert Atkin, Mitch Parsell and Swantje Lorrimer
womenphildatabase@gmail.com
And then there were five October 12, 2009
Women Nobel Prize winners, that is.
The latest woman to win the prize is the economist, Elinor Ostrom. Others:
Literature: Herta Müller
Chemistry: Ada Yonath
Medicine: Elizabeth H. Blackburn and Carol W. Greider
It will be interesting to see how long it takes for philosophers in general to realize that fields unreceptive to women are losing important human capital. In addition, that is, to making it harder for women to function.
This shouldn’t have to be done October 12, 2009
but given that it does, I’m glad Al Franken’s finally there to do it:
Al Franken successfully introduced legislation that denies federal contracts to companies that have policies — anywhere in the world — that punish employees for complaining about rape or discrimination on the job. This is in response to a KBR/Halliburton employee in Iraq who was drugged and gang-raped by co-workers and denied justice or even medical treatment, then locked in a storage container for 24 hours and told that she’d lose her job if she left the country to get medical help. She was also prohibited from suing or seeking criminal justice because her Halliburton contract forbade seeking any justice apart from private arbitration.
Thanks, Mr Jender! (And thanks also to Boing Boing, which has recently started posting a lot of stuff of great feminist importance.)
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