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Helen Beebee |
I am a professor of philosophy at the University of
Manchester. My research is mostly in the area of metaphysics, but I am also
co-chair of the British Philosophical Association/Society for Women in
Philosophy (UK) committee for women in philosophy, and I have recently been
spending quite a lot of time thinking about unconscious bias and the role it
might play in the underrepresentation of women in philosophy.
Women are unquestionably underrepresented in philosophy. In
the UK, women make up about half of all philosophy undergraduates, but only
about 30% of PhD candidates and 20% of professors – a figure nearly as low as
in STEM subjects (science, technology, engineering and mathematics). The numbers are similar in the USA, Australia and elsewhere. There are
doubtless many and varied reasons for this, but – in a discipline in which,
like STEM disciplines, the dominant stereotype is male – implicit bias surely
plays a major role.