My co-authored paper, “The Past 110 Years: Historical Data on the Underrepresentation of Women in Philosophy Journals” has been accepted for publication at Ethics and is now forthcoming. This research is a part of the Demographics in Philosophy Project: Women-In-Philosophy.org

You can find out more information about our recent work on my website.

Abstract: This paper provides the first large-scale, philosophy specific, longitudinal study examining publication rates by gender across a broad range of philosophy journals. It analyses data from the JSTOR database from 1900 to 2010. We divide our data into three distinct categories: “Top-Philosophy” journals, “Non-Top Philosophy” journals, and “Interdisciplinary” journals. The paper makes five points while providing an overview of the historical trends of women authorships in philosophy. First, since 1900, the proportion of women authorships across all types of philosophy journals has increased, but the proportion of women publishing in philosophy has plateaued since the 1990s, which counters the trends in most other fields of study. Second, Top-Philosophy journals publish the lowest proportion of women authors over time. Third, the proportion of women authorships is typically less than the proportion of US women faculty for Top-Philosophy journals but not lower ranked philosophy journals. Fourth, the proportion of women faculty in the US who specialize in Value Theory is much higher than the proportion of women authorships in Value Theory. Fifth, journals practicing different review types publish different proportions of women depending on journal category. We conclude that, although the proportion of women authorships in philosophy has increased over time, there are still measurable disparities in publication rates between men and women in different kinds of journals in philosophy.

Citation: Hassoun, N., Conklin, S., Nekrasov, M., & West, J. “The Past 110 Years: Historical Data on the Underrepresentation of Women in Philosophy Journals.” Ethics (Forthcoming).