Why are there so few women in philosophy?
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The data on doctorates is telling. According to recent research the number of women receiving doctorates in philosophy is very near the bottom of the academic barrel.
This blog has been looking at many facets of this problem. See our discussions of research here and here, for example. Or search our site for posts on implicit bias and stereotype threat.
New research is opening up our understanding of another factor, which resides in the beliefs about one’s ability to succeed in a career:
The decision to pursue a career rests in part on how we judge the following inequality:
If we believe this inequality to be true, we might proceed; if we decide it’s false, we might look elsewhere. Importantly, however, neither side of this inequality is easy to evaluate. Abilities are nebulous, context-sensitive things that are notoriously problematic to pin down. As a result, we often look to…
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