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The Data on Gender Inequality in Philosophy: The Spanish Case

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 September 2020

Obdulia Torres González Open the ORCID record for Obdulia Torres González [Opens in a new window]
Obdulia Torres González*
Affiliation:
Departamento de Filosofía, Lógica y Estética, Universidad de Salamanca, Campus Unamuno, Edif FES, 37007Salamanca, España
*
Corresponding author. omtorres@usal.es
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Abstract

This article examines gender imbalance in philosophy using statistical analysis of philosophy professionals and students in Spain. It is the only study on an international scope that provides complete, real data of an entire national system. This analysis shows that among teaching and research personnel, women make up 25% of the total, among full professors they represent 12%, and the glass-ceiling index in the field is the same as that in engineering. For the study, I resorted to a normalization of indicators to allow for international comparisons, which I have done using the reports and analyses available in other countries. In the second part of the article, I use the Spanish data to test some recent hypotheses on gender imbalance in philosophy. The data does not confirm the theory of Neven Sesardic and Rafael de Clercq, which attributes the imbalance to differences in cognitive abilities (Sesardic and Clercq 2014). However, the data does partially confirm the study by Molly Paxton, Carrie Figdor, and Valerie Tiberius regarding the dissuasive effect of introductory courses in philosophy (Paxton, Figdor, and Tiberius 2012), as well as that by Sarah Leslie and her colleagues on the field-specific abilities belief hypothesis (Leslie et al. 2015).

Type
Articles
Information
Hypatia , Volume 35 , Issue 4 , Fall 2020 , pp. 646 - 666
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s) 2020. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of Hypatia, a Nonprofit Corporation

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