Following on from all the discussion lately of women not being cited and not being properly discussed when they are cited, I’ve had two discussions just today with people describing to me specific cases women publishing ideas for which men are then credited with. If you know of such cases, think about heading over to What is it Like and telling us about them (suitably anonymised).
5 thoughts on “Stories of lack of citation, lack of credit, lack of discussion?”
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Feminist Philosophers 
I’m not sure I understand the import of the parenthetical in your last sentence, Jender. I understand that it would make sense of the contributor of the story to be anonymous. But shouldn’t the published pieces be non-anonymous? That is, if women author W is not getting credit for an idea published in 1996 (say) that male author M is getting credit for, wouldn’t it be a good idea to correct the public record here and just say that W thought of the idea first?
(It’s not as if such stories are tantamount to accusing M of *stealing* W’s idea. Often times, people have similar ideas at around the same time, but someone just makes it in print first. It isn’t necessarily M’s fault that M gets the credit. Etc. But the record could still be corrected. Does this make sense?)
Hmm. Yes, your point is a good one. But that blog requires anonymised stories as a matter of policy. Hmm….
I didn’t know the blog required anonymised stories as a matter of policy. my bad. If I may ask, though, whether the motivations for that requirement apply in this case? I see two reasons for anoymising the stories: protecting victims in bad situations and protecting the blog from becoming open to libel-related issues. Neither of these apply to cases in which it is a purely factual matter when two papers are published — and unless the interpretative situation is particularly complex, it should be discernible to philosophers the extent to which an idea is anticipated in an earlier published paper.
An example of the kind of thing I have in mind:
“Kris McDaniel argues that there are modes of being in his 201x paper ad naseum. Edith Stein argued this as well in Finite and Eternal Being in 1932.”
The person who submits the story doesn’t need to him or herself.
Does this make sense?
Sorry, that was poorly written.
I meant to say at the end that, “The person who submits the story doesn’t need to name him or herself. So philosopher W could still say, “W beat M to the press here.” without announcing that she is W.
I like Kris’s suggestion – that way we could encourage men to participate as well, and there wouldn’t be the assumption that the contributor of the post is the un-cited author (so fewer worries about coming across as self-aggrandizing or whining or whatever else we women use to talk ourselves out of speaking up).
Fwiw, I wouldn’t think it should be limited to cases where a woman published an idea first. It would also be useful to hear about cases where a group of people are working on a similar set of issues at a similar time, and the men are widely cited but the women are not.