Sex Discrimination and the Attempt to Change the Gender Distribution in Philosophy

Stephen Kershnar

The Case for Sex Discrimination in Academia

Dunkirk-Fredonia Observer

October 30, 2017

The academic world is very busy trying to hire women and minorities. A good illustration of this is what is going on in philosophy.

Philosophers are putting an enormous amount of resources into increasing the number of women in the profession. Women are favored in hiring in philosophy. There are philosophy summer programs open to women and minorities, but not white males, that help them prepare for graduate school. There are quotas for keynote speakers, women-only scholarships, and close attention paid to the percentage of women in the profession. Much of this is also true in other fields such as those in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM).

Whatever justifies the state paying for universities also justifies merit-based hiring. This is because more of the good things that universities bring about (for example, education or research) will come about if universities hire the best person for the job. The case for producing more of these good things is especially compelling at state universities given that the state makes taxpayers pay professors’ salaries and overhead.  

In philosophy, merit-based hiring favors discrimination in favor of men. Male philosophers produce more research than do female philosophers. This is true in general and in the top journals in the field. This is probably not the result of discrimination by the reviewers (the field’s gatekeepers) because the greater the degree of anonymous review, the greater the disparity. The publication difference is consistent with the clear majority of the most influential philosophers being men.  

The case for discrimination rests in part on the failure of studies to show that women are better researchers in other ways or better teachers. Male professors get better teaching evaluations, although some researchers do not think this is due to their being better in the classroom. Women do more service (for example, committee work), but, generally, universities do not think service is as important as research and teaching.

The result fits into a general pattern. For example, while female medical professors acquire federal funding at similar rate to male professors, they publish less and their publications have less impact. In science, generally, women publish less.  

This case for discrimination should not be surprising. There are a number of cases when gender or race discrimination for limited state positions is appealing. Currently, there is a shortage of physicians. 25% of female physicians in the U.S. do not work full-time. Discounting female applications by the likelihood they leave the field would decrease this shortage. Another instance of this is discounting minority applications to medical school. The cost of medical error is high and there is good reason to believe that black and Hispanic doctors, specifically those who strongly benefit from affirmative action, commit more errors and more serious errors.

Perhaps female philosophers are less productive because they are more likely than men to work part-time rather than full-time in philosophy. While there is no data in support of this, it is true in other fields (for example, physicians and veterinarians). In the absence of evidence that fewer female philosophers work full-time or that when they do work full-time they work fewer hours, this is not a reason to discriminate against them.

            One objector might claim that research, even at elite universities, is not important and, hence, universities should not discriminate on the basis of research. If this were true, then the way in which professors are hired, promoted, and paid is largely mistaken. This objection succeeds, then, only by throwing out what faculty currently look at when hiring and promoting philosophers.

            A second objector might focus on the cost of sex discrimination. She might argue that women in philosophy are particularly valuable because they provide role models, reduce stereotypes, improve group decision-making, make the workplace less homogenous, and provide other benefits (for example, more investment into women’s education). Even if this were true, though, it is unclear that these benefits outweigh the cost in research productivity. In the absence of knowledge of the balance of these benefits and costs, discriminating against women is reasonable. The same is true for not discriminating.   

A third objection is that women’s lesser productivity in philosophy is due to injustice. Perhaps unequal and unfair demands on mothers or workplace hostility explains the difference. The problem with this objection is that, if true, it might justify changing the workplace. It is less clear that it justifies giving women positions for which they are, on average, less meritorious. If one NFL running back is better than a second, most people (including the owner, coaches, players, and fans) think the first should be hired over the second even if injustice caused the second to be worse. It is unclear why it is more important to choose the best running back than the best philosopher.

A fourth objection is that merit-based hiring should be done on an application-by-application basis. The objector argues that an employer should not favor someone merely because he is a man. This objection does not succeed if a person’s sex helps us predict how well someone will perform. Based on what we know about research production in philosophy, medicine, and STEM and what we know about career choices and performance elsewhere, it is reasonable to believe that sex adds to what we know about an applicant’s likely performance in the future.

Universities regularly use other rough predictive information such as how elite the school was from which an applicant graduated, how well she does when interviewed, and number and quality of publications. There should not be a much higher bar for sex-based predictive factors than other predictive factors. Also, this objection will not work for affirmative-action proponents because they support taking sex and race into account.

In philosophy and likely much of the academic world, state universities should either not discriminate or, if they must discriminate, they should favor men.