Feminist Philosophy Quarterly: coming soon to an internet near you!

Feminist Philosophy Quarterly (FPQ) is an online, open access, peer-reviewed journal dedicated to promoting feminist philosophical scholarship. We welcome submissions from all areas and traditions of feminist philosophy, and our goal is to be a platform for philosophical research that engages the problems of our time in the broader world.

As an open-access journal, our goal is to make feminist philosophical scholarship of the highest quality widely available, and so we are free to authors and to readers. We also aim to improve the presence and impact of women and feminist philosophers. We take considerations of implicit bias seriously, and employ the best practices of the profession, including triple-anonymous review.

We believe that all areas of feminist philosophical practice can contribute to social change, assisting those who strive for greater justice and equity and work against oppression in all forms. We endeavour to ally ourselves with others who are making such contributions.

Editors:

• Samantha Brennan
• Carla Fehr
• Alice MacLachlan
• Kathryn J. Norlock

The website goes live and will be ready to start accepting submissions In June 2014.  We expect our inaugural issue to be published in January 2015.  Our next announcement will include contact and submission information.

It’s free, as it always should be!

Men discuss the evolution of morality

Another gendered event:  The Boston Colloquium for the Philosophy of Science Forum, “Evolutionary Explanations of Morality,” has an all-male lineup of speakers.

 

If you want to know about the harm that all-male events do, please check out this link to our Gendered Conference Campaign.

 

If you want to comment on this post I would like to invite you to first check out this list of frequently asked questions about the Gendered Conference Campaign.  Doing so might spare us all from repeating conversations in the comments.

 

Finally, here are some strategies for avoiding creating a gendered conference.

“Academia’s indentured servants”

It is hard to know which parts of “Academia’s indentured servants” posted on Aljazeera, and written by Sarah Kendzior, to quote because I find the whole thing so quotable.  So here are a couple of important bits that I hope will encourage you to read it all.

On April 8, 2013, the New York Timesreported that 76 percent of American university faculty are adjunct professors – an all-time high. Unlike tenured faculty, whose annual salaries can top $160,000, adjunct professors make an average of $2,700 per course and receive no health care or other benefits.

and

On Twitter, I wondered why so many professors who study injustice ignore the plight of their peers. “They don’t consider us their peers,” the adjuncts wrote back. Academia likes to think of itself as a meritocracy – which it is not – and those who have tenured jobs like to think they deserved them. They probably do – but with hundreds of applications per available position, an awful lot of deserving candidates have defaulted to the adjunct track.

a great chance to work on improving the climate for women and minorities in philosophy

The APA Committee on the Status of Women (CSW) is establishing a Site Visit Program  designed to improve the climate for women and minorities in individual philosophy departments. The CSW is accepting applicants from philosophy faculty members who wish to be site visitors, for a one day Site Visit Training Workshop that will take place on June 1, 2013 at the University of Dayton. Here is a link to the application to participate in the Site Visit Training Workshop.

The organizers hope to create site visit teams that are diverse–so, yes, white men are welcome to apply!  As Sally Haslanger was quoted over at NewApps

Even more important, we would really like to encourage people – including WHITE MEN – to apply for the site visit training.  It is important that we have allies involved because having mixed teams will be more effective than just a group of women….who are feminists, besides!

Applications will be accepted until March 1.

Dr. Rita Levi-Montalcini, Nobel Prize-winning neurologist, dies at 103

 

Dr. Rita Levi-Montalcini, a Nobel Prize-winning neurologist who discovered critical chemical tools that the body uses to direct cell growth and build nerve networks, opening the way for the study of how those processes can go wrong in diseases like dementia and cancer, died on Sunday at her home in Rome. She was 103.

Her story is amazing and I am looking forward to reading her autobiography, In Praise of Imperfection.

She  defied  Mussolini, survived the Nazi’s, had a long career at Washington University in St. Louis, won a Nobel Prize, served as a U.N. Goodwill Ambassador for the Food and Agriculture Organization, was made a senator for life in Italy and was the recipient of many, many honours.

Two philosophy meetings, no women.

Conference 1:

PhysPhil Conference 2012 : A Brief Look At The Big Picture

Beginnings can be delicate times.  This is the first The Physics & Philosophy Society conference.  The organizers describe the program this way:

The day has been divided into talks and discussions on the subject of space and time, the strange world of quantum mechanics, and the relationship between metaphysics and the physical sciences. Spanning the worlds of physics, philosophy, and philosophical theology, this promises to be a very stimulating interdisciplinary conference.

Wouldn’t it be nice if there were also some gender diversity among the speakers?

Conference 2:

Carnap and Kuhn: A Reappraisal

Here we have an all-male program committee, and a line up of speakers and panelists, all of whom, yep, are guys.

Information about the Gendered Conference Campaign

If you are new to the Gendered Conference Campaign please take a look at this post that describes why we bring gendered conferences to your attention.  Especially important is the part about us focusing on the harmful effects of gendered conferences, rather than the intentions of the conference organizers.

Also, here is a link to FAQ‘s about the Gendered Conference Campaign.  It would be great if you took a look at them so that we don’t have to cover old ground in the comments.

Diversity in Philosophy– conference CFP

Diversity in Philosophy

May 29-31, 2013

University of Dayton, Dayton, OH

This conference examines and addresses the underrepresentation of women and minorities in Philosophy. Participants will focus on hurdles and best practices associated with the inclusion of underrepresented groups in Philosophy. It will focus on such questions as: 

• Why are there so few women and minority Philosophy majors, graduate students, and faculty members?
• What are some effective ways to improve the recruitment, retention and advancement of women and minorities in Philosophy?
• What roles do implicit bias and stereotyping play in who advances in Philosophy?
• How can the climate for women and minorities be improved?
• What role can feminist philosophers and philosophers of race, play in advancing women and minorities in Philosophy?
• What can Philosophy learn from National Science Foundation ADVANCE initiatives that address how to recruit and advance women in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) fields?
• How can we improve the climate for other underrepresented groups in Philosophy, including those who are LGBTQ, disabled, first generation in college, or economically disadvantaged?

Goals of the conference include creating opportunities for networking and building supportive communities as well as sharing cutting edge research.

Here is more information, both about the conference and where to send submissions.  The submission deadline is Feb 1, 2013.

International Feyerabend conference, 14 invited speakers, no women

Yep, an international conference on Feyerabend , speakers from the whole wide world, and all of them are men.    The growing list of gendered conferences is really starting to get me feeling bad.

If you are new to the Gendered Conference Campaign please take a look at this post that describes why we bring gendered conferences to your attention.  Especially important is the part about us focusing on the harmful effects of gendered conferences, rather than the intentions of the conference organizers.

Also, here is a link to FAQ‘s about the Gendered Conference Campaign.  It would be great if you took a look at them so that we don’t have to cover old ground in the comments.

Update:  As Matt Brown points out below, this conference generated the following post here in December: https://feministphilosophers.wordpress.com/2011/12/02/gcc-related-query-women-on-feyerabend/

PhiloSTEM-4 Another Gendered Conference, sigh

The Midwest Workshop in Philosophy of Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics is sporting an all male list of invited speakers.

The call for papers is gracious, inviting novel contributions to philosophy of STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) including those from a historical perspective.  It continues:

Since the emphasis is not on “reading” a paper but on having a dialogue with the participants, presentations should be prepared for a general audience in the philosophy of science and presenters must be ready to break things down for non-specialists.

The absence of women here makes me particularly sad because (1) there is so much work being done on the under-representation of women in STEM, and so little representation of  and engagement with that work in philosophy of STEM, and (2) this cfp has such a nice emphasis on open dialogue that it seems like it could have a  good climate for women speakers.

It is important to note that previous PhilosSTEM workshops have invited a couple of women.  So, we know it can be done.

As a reminder, here is a description of the Gendered Conference Campaign and here is a list of FAQs. If you are new to the Gendered Conference Campaign please take a look at them so we don’t have to rehash old arguments in the comments.

Dress Code After Mastectomy

Jodi Jaecks is a Seattle woman, a breast cancer survivor who underwent a double mastectomy. She needed to swim for her recovery. A bathing suit top caused her pain.  She had no breast tissue and asked for permission to swim topless.

Jaecks, who has neither breasts nor nipples, says she wasn’t looking for a fight, simply a way to be active and perhaps get some temporary relief for her chest pain.

She was denied.

Why?  There are some clothes that women are just supposed to wear:

“And that’s when they said it was a policy that they required gender-appropriate clothing … regardless if I had nipples or whatever,” Jaecks said. 

And of course, there are the children to think of:

“We’re trying to protect children,” Potter [spokeswoman for the Seattle Parks Department] said. “A public pool isn’t necessarily the place to be carrying out an agenda.”

Eventually, Jaecks was granted an exception to the policy, during adult swims.  The Seattle Times says,

Jaecks says that’s not good enough. She wants the dress code changed for all women with mastectomy scars. She’ll keep on pressing for such a policy change, she says, and Wednesday night was not sure whether she would take advantage of the decision in her favor.

“It’s absurd and ludicrous that they would give one person permission because it puts the onus on a specific person to ask for permission individually,” Jaecks said. “It’s going to be harder for a more reserved, self-conscious woman to have the guts to stand out and be different.”

According to Jaecks

“It started as a personal fitness issue but once they said no to me, it became a far greater overarching political issue,” she says. “I’m hoping this will change their policy,” she told the paper. “Ultimately, I want to remove the stigma that women with breast cancer have to endure. We should be so far beyond that at this point.”