A couple of readers asked me about this petition--which, among other things, supports the Gendered Conference Campaign (GCC) promoted for a couple of years by the Feminist Philosophers blog--but in fact goes well beyond the GCC, which probably explains why so few senior male philosophers have signed it (more on that in a moment). The GCC calls on philosophers, in essence, to not organize all-male conferences (or all-male volumes). The GCC includes some speculation about possible harms of single-gender events, but regardless of the speculative harms, it seems to me that the basic imperative--include qualified female philosophers in conferences and volumes--is an eminently sensible one, and a basic demand of fairness in a field with a pretty poor history on gender equity. As a female philosopher I respect put it to me in correspondence:
The causes of all-male conference lineups are various: age distributions, topic areas, social networks, self-promotion, salience, implicit bias, chance. I personally don't really care what the fine detail of the causes is—I actually think the effect of implicit bias specifically is vastly overplayed, whereas the weight of both conscious sexism and more institutional or structural facts about the field play a much larger role. Be that as it may, and aside from sheer bad luck, most of what's happening is in the general ballpark of unjustified exclusion-by-default, whether due to active malice or passive entitlement. That culture needs changing.... The ingrained sexism of professional philosophy is real. It is a problem that I (and women like me) have experienced directly, in small ways and large, at almost every point in our careers. I am tired of waiting for it to magically go away by itself....The GCC has been great for women in [my fields].....[Philosophy has terrible problems with institutional sexism, and I think the GCC has proved itself unexpectedly effective in shifting the balance of expectations in a positive way.
Unfortunately, the petition noted above, and drafted by Mark Lance (Georgetown) and Eric Schliesser (Ghent), goes well beyond the GCC in committing signatories to a bizarre quota:
We call on all senior male philosophers to refuse invitations to keynote at conferences with two or more keynotes none of which are women.
So a male philosopher should decline a keynote if the other keynote at the conference is not female (unless he can get the organizers to invite a woman as the other keynote instead). About 16% of senior philosophers (i.e., likely keynote candidates) are female, and in some sub-fields, the numbers are worse. I am not going to decline invitations to keynote based on such a standard, and I imagine many others feel the same way. (Even one of Lance's and Schliesser's co-bloggers objected to this.) The GCC has, wisely I think, never proposed quotas, and has instead called attention to conferences with multiple keynotes and speakers (from four to ten in the cases I've seen), all of whom were male. Maybe I've missed it, but I've yet to see the GCC call unfavorable attention to a conference with two keynotes, both of whom were male.
I have no idea what motivated inclusion of this bizarre quota, which is not part of the GCC, but I imagine it has depressed support from senior philosophers, especially senior male philosophers who would have to make this commitment in order for the provision to have any effect. As I learned in correspondence, some who did sign the petition didn't realize what they signed on to, being misled by the general show of support for the GCC and not reading the particulars.
If someone wants to organize a public petition of support for the actual GCC, I'll be happy to publicize it (and sign it). But quite apart from petitions, philosophers should make a real commitment to not put on all-male conferences. It ain't hard, but it does require being self-conscious about the issue--and the GCC has, as my correspondent suggested, "shifted the balance of expectations in a positive way" on that front.
ADDENDUM: Some readers point out an additional reason that some had for not signing, namely, that Lance and Schliesser apparently changed the language of the petition even after there were a couple hundred signatures, and have indicated they may make more changes. I haven't followed this little drama, but having heard it from more than one source now, I imagine this is the case, and I can see why some might find it a bit worrisome to put their name on a document whose content is fluid.
ANOTHER: Eric Schliesser writes, regarding the addendum, to note that "we never claimed that further changes would be made, and don't plan to make any." He adds: "[T]he only change we made was at the start of the petition (with under 10% of current signatures [I think we were around 70 signatures at the time]) was the insertions of two clarifications/qualifications that weakened the shared obligation (so as to take into account unusual circumstances that may be taken to be defeasible of the shared obligation). We did so after much public discussion on the blog with critics and friends of the petition....[N]obody that had signed the petition wrote us to complain about the change, and we also haven't heard indirectly from anybody that regretted signing for this reason."
AND ONE MORE: Another reader points out this post, which would have led readers to think changes to the petition were forthcoming. In any case, I take Professor Schliesser's message, above, to indicate that is no longer an issue, even if it was perceived to be, not unreasonably, at one point in time.
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