1.1 Why Does the Underrepresentation of Women in Philosophy Matter?

Over the past decade, professional women philosophers have increasingly voiced their discontent and disappointment about the persistent underrepresentation of women and racial, ethnic and gender minorities in the field of philosophy. This concern stretches much further into history, and the underrepresentation itself is as old as Western philosophy. In our days, the underrepresentation of women and other minorities still encompasses all levels of academic philosophy, from students to those involved in teaching.

When this concern is raised, this immediately begs the question whether it matters how many women practise philosophy. After all, opting out and choosing another field may be wise, as far as economic possibilities and even emotional rewards are concerned. What is more, we witness a similar disproportion in many other fields, such as nursing or engineering, without necessarily thinking twice about it. It is possible to argue, however, that a more even gender distribution could be for the good of the development of even these fields: diversity as such can be seen as beneficial, as it can bring new questions with it, or different ways of looking at familiar questions. Would not philosophy also benefit from attracting more students with diverse gender identities, as well as from different ethnic and economic backgrounds? Is it possible that the homogeneity of the staff and student body leaves philosophy outside many of the developments that enrich the rest of the humanities? This is the justification of what is beneficial for philosophy itself (see e.g. Friedman 2013, 32–36). Even if groups were underrepresented because their members have more interesting study paths to follow, we can still regret this absence as a loss to the discipline of philosophy.

Another justification points towards what is beneficial to women and minorities themselves. Learning philosophy can be beneficial to the currently underrepresented groups in a number of ways: (1) it can be highly enjoyable, (2) it develops the student’s capacity for critical in-depth analysis, and (3) as professional philosophers, women and members of other minorities can take part in the analysis and development of philosophical approaches rather than just apply them. Such participation implies, in turn, intellectual and social influence.

Finally, and perhaps most self-evidently, we can ask what is just towards women and other minorities in philosophy. It is hard to question the justness of creating a learning and working environment in which nobody feels alienated because of their gender, sexual orientation, ethnicity, race or social background. If the absence of such an environment is one reason for the underrepresentation of women and other minorities, then one can consider the current state of affairs as unsatisfactory and requiring change. What is more, an organisation that claims to be committed to justice and equality is simply inconsistent, if it allows unjust structures to persist.

A great deal has already been written on the topic of women’s underrepresentation in philosophy. For the most part, the discussion deals with the situation of professional women philosophers in the academic community. Linda Alcoff’s Singing in the Fire: Stories of Women in Philosophy (2003) is a collection of women philosophers’ reminiscences of the problems they have faced in their careers. Katrina Hutchison’s and Fiona Jenkins’s (eds) (2013) Women in Philosophy: What Needs to Change? discusses widely the situation of women in philosophy, with a detailed analysis of the gendered aspects of implicit bias, stereotype threat and microinequities. Michael Brownstein’s and Jessica Saul’s (eds) Implicit Bias and Philosophy, volumes 1 and 2, (2016a, b) investigate the psychological and ethical aspects of implicit bias in philosophy, covering, for instance, the themes of rationality, knowledge, structural injustice and moral responsibility. Among the numerous articles that deal with the problem of discrimination and the essentialist tendencies of some approaches to women’s situation in philosophy, we can mention Louise Antony’s “Different Voices or Perfect Storm: Why Are There So Few Women in Philosophy?” (2012) and Anne Leuschner’s “Why So Low? On Indirect Effects of Gender Bias in Philosophy” (2019). Helen Beebee’s and Jennifer Saul’s report Women in Philosophy in the UK (2011) and its recent update (2021) are, in turn, significant and compact resources for statistics, actions, initiatives and recommendable practices. In addition to these publications, a number of empirical surveys on women’s underrepresentation in philosophy majors have come out in the past years (see Sect. 1.2).

As all of these publications demonstrate in their own way, women’s underrepresentation in professional philosophy is intertwined with the learning and teaching of philosophy. In the remainder of this introduction, I discuss the data provided by empirical research as well as some of the viewpoints suggested by analytic philosophers to deal with the issue of underrepresentation. The overall focus of this volume, however, is not on professional women philosophers but on where the seeds of the issue are sown, in the situations faced by women students of philosophy and in the pedagogical responses to the potentially alienating elements in those situations.

The concepts of “situation” and “alienation” are the most central to my discussion of women students’ marginal position in philosophy (see Sect. 2.3). There appears to be something in the practice and public image of philosophy that is experienced as more alienating by the underrepresented groups than by most of the White—and supposedly heterosexual—males, who form the overwhelming majority of students and staff. The goal of the study is to identify the sources of alienation on the basis of earlier empirical and philosophical research, and to examine how teaching and learning practices could contribute to making philosophy more welcoming towards women and other minorities, as well as towards those who belong to the White and male majority but still experience a similar alienation.

The title of the book, Sisters of the Brotherhood: Alienation and Inclusion in Learning Philosophy, refers to the situation of women as both included in and alienated from the male-dominated field of philosophy, as well as to inclusive practices in philosophy teaching. In other words, my focus is on women, even though I consider race, class and other possible sources of students’ alienation from philosophy. Despite the fact that philosophy as a discipline is now much more welcoming towards women than it was, for instance, in the 1960s (see Simons and Ruonakoski 2021), their situation is still different from that of men, according to whose interests and social styles the practices of the philosophical community have been formed over its long history.

Some attempts have already been made to improve the situation of women and other minorities in philosophy. Different countries and universities have taken different measures, which makes assessment of the overall situation difficult: some have renewed their policies on hiring practices, others are focusing on the inclusiveness of the syllabus, and so on. Recommendations that advance gender parity are extremely important, of course, and one of the book’s objectives is precisely to identify the relevant non-discriminatory practices that can be implemented at the departmental level. An equally important objective, however, is to help readers recognise that the other’s experience always remains hidden from the view of the explorative philosophical gaze—not only in its immediacy but also in its singular situatedness. Consequently, the problems I am able identify may differ from those seen by a person who has a different background—for instance, a different gender identity, sexual orientation, ethnicity or social class. In fact, the problems of the other can be invisible to me simply because I never encounter our “shared” environment in the way that the other does. The volume therefore advocates the recognition of one’s “not-knowing” as an important ethical and pedagogical goal, one that allows change to go deeper than the level of administrational necessity, which is often adhered to only half-heartedly. In this spirit, I hope to appeal to the imagination of those of us who teach philosophy, especially in higher education, and to provide some tools that might help readers analyse the power dynamics in the classroom. I also suggest ways in which the diversity of students could be addressed in the teaching of philosophy.

The motivation of this volume being practical in the described sense, I have taken the liberty to integrate discussions from different theoretical perspectives in it: phenomenology, analytic philosophy, empirical research and psychoanalytic theory. As background research for the book, a small-scale survey on students’ experiences of studying philosophy was conducted, and interviews were made with a number of philosophy students and professionals of philosophy from various countries (see Chap. 4). The book incorporates many pedagogical ideas of the philosophers who designed and organised the experimental summer schools in the Gender and Philosophy project. While the discussion on the summer schools and their pedagogical input is necessarily coloured by my own pedagogical leanings, there remains a certain polyphony in these sections that hopefully enriches the work. As for the interviews and survey, I have likewise wanted to highlight opinions that are not necessarily identical with my own, but help us get a broader understanding of possible ways of interpreting the aspect of gender in philosophy.

Questioning the styles of interaction in learning and teaching philosophy inevitably leads to questions about the nature of philosophy itself. What are the aspects of philosophy that we find valuable and worth preserving, and what are those that we should, perhaps, dispense with, to make room for more inclusive practices of philosophy? What is the future of philosophy like? How do we actively create this future—or is it enough to carry on the tradition? These questions are, of course, without unequivocal answers, but at the same time relevant to all practitioners of philosophy, whether or not they engage in teaching.

All in all, I have approached the question of learning and teaching philosophy by investigating the philosophical basis of that learning and teaching. While the volume at hand includes practical pedagogical suggestions and guidelines, I have written it as a philosopher who invites fellow philosophers to investigate the question of gender and pedagogical choices in all their complexity. That the topic is approached predominantly from the viewpoint of existential phenomenology is perhaps most visible in how the themes of situatedness, temporality, intersubjectivity and embodiment are treated in the book, as well as in the chosen concepts. I elucidate the power relations in the learning environment and demonstrate how women and men come to occupy different possibilities in a seemingly egalitarian setting. Drawing from Simone de Beauvoir’s vision of the development of gender, I discuss the different aspects of situations of students and the teaching staff. In addition, I examine the formation of alienation from philosophy among students, suggesting that their experiences of belonging and alienation are formed in a complex process in which philosophy is never “pure” but always structured in a historical and social context. In the following section, I consider underrepresentation from the viewpoint of empirical research, returning to more general pedagogical and conceptual questions in Chap. 2.

1.2 Data on the Underrepresentation of Women in Philosophy

For most people working in the field of philosophy today, the underrepresentation of women and other minorities in it should be evident. When one peeks into a classroom or a meeting room of a philosophy department or participates in a conference, it is not unusual to witness what looks like an overwhelming preponderance of White male students. During the past decade, quite a few empirical studies dealing with the issue have emerged. The data comes primarily from the English-speaking countries, and problematically, does not allow direct comparison even between those. In the British data, we can see a steady decline in the proportion of women from the undergraduate students (46%), the graduate students (37%) and PhD students (31%) to staff members with temporary (28%) and permanent jobs (24%) (Beebee and Saul 2011, 8). The figures from Australia tell us that while in 2001–2008 as many as 61% of students taking introductory courses in philosophy were women, only 44% of those graduating with a philosophy major and 41% of those with a PhD were women (Bishop et al. 2013, 235–236). These figures still seem rather high in comparison to the UK, but among staff, the tendency is similar: in 2009, women comprised only 28% of the faculty (Bishop et al. 2013, 232).

Some quantitative studies have been conducted on gender parity in philosophy in the United States (e.g. Paxton et al. 2012; see Bishop et al. 2013, 246). However, the low percentage of respondents makes it difficult to generalise the results. For this reason, I only refer to a result obtained at the University of Oklahoma by Heather Demarest et al.: on introductory courses to philosophy, women are 51% of students, but in more advanced courses, only 37% of students. In 2003, the proportion of women in full-time philosophy faculty positions was only 17% (Demarest et al. 2017, 525).

These trends are indicative of the situation in the Nordic countries, even though no large-scale study has been done (see, however, Reuter 2015). Generally speaking, philosophy differs significantly from the other humanities that tend to be female-dominated, and more closely resembles mathematics, physics and engineering in that all of these fields are male-dominated. Across different countries and universities there is a significant drop in the percentage of women students between introductory courses and more advanced ones. This result is often interpreted as indicative of a possibility to foster gender balance by how philosophy is taught.

In an American study, Morgan Thompson et al. (2016) examined the possible motivators of women’s opting out. They looked into seven different aspects of this: (1) identification with philosophy, (2) perceived instructor fairness, (3) perceived student respect, (4) comfort of speaking in class, (6) beliefs about field-specific ability and (7) beliefs about gender and race gap. One of their findings was that the students’ perception of the proportion of women on the syllabus had an influence on whether women were willing to continue in philosophy or not. (Thompson et al. 2016, 16.) Even though the results remain fairly inconclusive overall, the researchers argue that there is a significant difference in how women and men experience their belonging to the field, to the disadvantage of women. As for methods of teaching and learning, Thompson et al. (2016, 18) suggest that women are less likely to enjoy thought experiments as a method of practising philosophy, and that therefore a wider variety of teaching methods could be of use to attract more women students to major in philosophy. In addition, highlighting the relevance of philosophy to a wider range of problems might make it more interesting to women.

A similar result is obtained by Demarest et al. (2017). The researchers argue that two attitudes predict continuation in philosophy, namely “feeling similar to the kinds of people who become philosophers” and “enjoying thinking about philosophical puzzles and issues” (Demarest et al. 2017, 526–527). Women are less likely to hold these attitudes than men. The researchers suggest that having more women instructors or more women authors on the syllabus may not be the only way to tackle the issue of “feeling similar”, for at least in some cases it may be enough to point out the counter-stereotypical characteristics of a historical philosopher to make room for diversity and to provide objects of identification. As for enjoying “philosophical puzzles and issues”, women were less likely than men to hold this attitude in the beginning of an introductory course, but the likelihood to do so dropped even lower during the term. (Ibid., 529–531.)

As the researchers admit (Demarest et al. 2017, 530), the way they formulated the question was somewhat problematic, because the emphasis on “philosophical puzzles” reinforces the idea of philosophy as a game that works through thought experiments. In other words, the formulation directs the respondents’ attention to a specific mode of practising philosophy. However, in an environment in which philosophy is practised mainly in a manner that detaches it from the everyday concerns and works with thought experiments, a low interest in “philosophical puzzles” can understandably predict discontinuation.

In their survey on women’s opting out from philosophy at the University of Sydney, Dougherty and others found that there may be pre-university factors that have an effect on women’s low likelihood to identify themselves with the discipline. According to them, a gender schema may be operating that is very difficult to undo by increasing the number of female lecturers (I use “lecturer” here as a concise term for university teaching staff) or making changes in the teaching methods. However, the researchers point out that women’s choices of disciplines should be examined on a larger scale, because they do not choose between philosophy and nothing, but philosophy and other disciplines, many of which apparently fascinate a good part of women students more than philosophy does (Dougherty et al. 2015, 471; see also Reuter 2015, 16–17).

In another study, Debbie Ma et al. (2017) demonstrate that women are more likely than men to view the discipline as masculine and less likely to identify with it, and that there is a correlation between these two things: the women who think that philosophy is “a masculine field” have difficulties identifying with it. Male students’ perception of the field as masculine, however, does not correlate with their likelihood to continue in philosophy. In contrast to Dougherty et al., Ma et al. suggest that it is possible to influence the gender disparity in philosophy through a pedagogy that does not reinforce the view of philosophy as a masculine discipline.

Without a doubt, there are many other variables that may have an effect on women students opting out of studying philosophy. Experiences of philosophy (if any) while in upper secondary school, the public image of philosophy and even the location of the university are likely to have an impact.Footnote 1 For instance, 50% of the applicants accepted to study moral philosophy at the University of Helsinki were women in 2016, when students still started directly as majors in a specific subject.Footnote 2 At the same time, a smaller Finnish university further from the capital, the University of Jyväskylä, had a significantly lower percentage of accepted women applicants (12%) and a yet lower percentage of women applicants in philosophy all in all, regardless of the fact that its emphasis in the history of philosophy, phenomenology and critical theory might be considered more attractive to women than the focus on analytic philosophy at the University of Helsinki. This suggests that the location of the university may play a role. Before the reasons behind these differences are investigated empirically, it is anybody’s guess whether they can be explained by the quality of teaching of philosophy in upper secondary school in different areas, by women’s preference for more secure choices in education outside the metropolitan area, by the metropolitan area’s attractiveness to women, or by something else. In any case, the impact of location cannot alone explain the general underrepresentation of women in philosophy. Especially when students choose their major only after taking introductory courses in several subjects, the actual teaching of philosophy at the university level and the ways of interacting in the classroom will have more influence on students’ choices.

1.3 Sexual Harassment and Gender-Based Harassment

During the past few years, there has been a lot of discussion about harassment and discrimination within philosophy.Footnote 3 This discussion preceded the second and more global rise of the #MeToo movement in 2017,Footnote 4 which, within a very short time, radically changed not only the debate on sexual harassment but on the way gender relations are addressed and understood, and how all forms of harassment are dealt with.Footnote 5 What is more, in the years following the rise of the #MeToo movement more research has been done on sexual harassment in academia. The movement has certainly had its impact within philosophy, adding to the ongoing discussion of gender relations and harassment in the field and making it, perhaps, at least a bit easier for students and faculty to speak up about harassment.

How should sexual harassment and gender-based harassment be defined? In EU Directive 2002/73/EC sexual harassment is defined as a situation “where any form of unwanted verbal, non-verbal or physical conduct of a sexual nature occurs, with the purpose or effect of violating the dignity of a person, in particular when creating an intimidating, hostile, degrading, humiliating or offensive environment”. How the specific acts of sexual harassment are defined varies from one country to another. According to the Finnish Equality Act, for instance, sexual harassment can be expressed by “sexually suggestive gestures or expressions, indecent talk, puns and comments or questions referring to body parts, clothing or private life, pornographic material, sexually suggestive letters, emails, text messages or phone calls, physical contact, suggestions or demands for sexual intercourse or other kinds of sexual activity, rape or attempted rape”.Footnote 6

Gender-based harassment is defined in the Finnish Equality Act as “unwanted contact that is not of a sexual nature but which is related to the gender of a person, their gender identity or gender expression, and by which the person’s psychological or physical integrity is intentionally or factually violated and an intimidating, hostile, degrading, humiliating or offensive atmosphere is created”. Gender-based harassment is expressed by “degrading the individual’s gender, gender identity or gender expression”, or by “workplace and school bullying, when this is based on the victim’s gender”.Footnote 7 However, it is important to see that in an American consensus study report by National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine (NASEM), for instance, gender-based harassment is defined as one form of sexual harassment, the other two being unwanted sexual attention and sexual coercion (NASEM 2018, 48).

Legislation gives its own answers to how sexual harassment should be understood, but how individuals in different countries understand it does not necessarily correspond with the legal definitions. According to a survey (2017) that dealt with data from seven European countries, namely Germany, the UK, France, Sweden, Denmark, Finland and Norway, there appears to be a consensus among the respondents in all of these countries in that if a man touches a woman’s bottom or offers her his sexual services, this is sexual harassment (94–97% agree in the first scenario, 86–92% agree in the second one), whereas the scenario in which a man tells a woman a sex joke or looks at her breasts finds more understanding in Germany and Denmark than in the UK, France and Finland.Footnote 8 In Germany only 35% of the respondents thought that telling sex jokes was sexual harassment, and in Denmark the percentage was even lower, 17%, in stark contrast to the figures of the UK (69%), France (53%) and Finland (67%). Respectively, only 29% of Germans and 26% of Danes considered looking at a woman’s breasts as sexual harassment, compared to 50% of respondents in the UK, 51% in France and in 47% Finland.Footnote 9

In the past few years, sexual harassment in higher education has been the topic of numerous studies, but it is fairly difficult to compare their results, and the differences between countries are remarkable. According to a systematic review of highly cited research papers in scientific journals, the exposure to sexual harassment in higher education “varies between 11 and 73 per cent for heterosexual women (median 49 per cent) and between 3 and 26 per cent for heterosexual men (median 15 per cent)” (Bondestam and Lundqvist 2020, 403). For now, there is little research on sexual harassment or gender harassment in philosophy specifically. For this reason, it is difficult to estimate exactly how common sexual harassment is within philosophy, how philosophy compares with other fields, and what the differences between different countries or departments are. One thing is clear, however: sexual and gender harassment do exist within philosophy, even if they may not be a part of the everyday interaction in the classroom, among students and at the department.

Of course, heterosexual cis women are not the only targets of sexual and gender harassment; heterosexual men and sexual and gender minorities can be targeted, as is becoming increasingly clear thanks to the increased readiness of individuals to speak out about their experiences. Many cases may still remain hidden, however, due to the fact that the targets may experience the incidents too hurtful or shameful to discuss them openly. It is also possible that they do not expect to be believed, or they may consider their case as unique rather than symptomatic of a larger problem. As the targets are often young women who have very little power, they may choose not to risk their career development by speaking out.

In interview, Black women philosophers also suggest that the stereotype of Black women as maids or prostitutes affects how they are viewed by other staff members (Allen 2008, 170–172; see also Hill Collins 2009, 142–145 and Dotson 2012). This phenomenon of sexualisation is not limited to Black women philosophers, for it has been demonstrated that women of different minorities are often sexualised (Shimizu 2007). It is as if some applied a different set of rules on how to act towards women in their ingroup and outgroup. Of course, young women can be said to be sexualised also as a group: they are the objects of most of the inappropriate behaviour.

In addition, trans women, trans men and genderqueer individuals face other kinds of challenges in academia. As transgender individuals often have to endure harsh attitudes and rejection by people close to them as well as by strangers, diverse problems may accumulate in their lives, so that they may not make it to academia at all. Once in academia, their gender identity may be misrecognised, or they may be offended on its basis. Sometimes people are pressured to state their “actual” gender. Needless to say, for those who belong to many marginalised groups, that is, for instance, for Black trans women, the situation may be quite fraught despite the seemingly liberal attitudes in academia.Footnote 10

On the basis of the NASEM report, sexual and gender minorities are more likely than other individuals to encounter gender-based harassment, as are those individuals who question gender norms in their behaviour or appearance. More precisely, lesbian or bisexual women, and women who endorse gender-egalitarian beliefs, or who are considered “masculine”, encounter gender-based harassment at higher rates than other women. Similarly, transgender, petite or gay men experience more gender-based harassment than other men (NASEM 2018, 27). According another American study, 75.2% of undergraduate students who belonged to the TGQN group (those identifying as transgender, genderqueer, non-conforming, questioning, or as something not listed on the survey), reported being harassed. The percentage of harassed cis female undergraduate students was also alarmingly high, 61.9% (Cantor et al. 2017, xvi).

Having been harassed does not presuppose that this occurs on a daily basis, of course, but even so, harassment should be taken seriously and acted against in and outside the classroom (see e.g. Meyer 2008). In addition to the overt forms of harassment and discrimination there are subtler discriminatory mechanisms, such as implicit bias, stereotype threat and micro-inequities. These are introduced in the following section.

1.4 Subtle Mechanisms of Discrimination: Implicit Bias, Micro-Inequities and Stereotype Threat

Implicit bias, micro-inequity and stereotype threat are originally psychological and sociological concepts that are used to describe those marginalising phenomena that are difficult to address precisely because of their “invisibility”. In philosophy, these issues have been discussed in detail in Katrina Hutchison’s and Fiona Jenkins’s (eds) (2013) Women in Philosophy: What Needs to Change? New York, NY: Oxford University Press.

Implicit bias refers to unconscious biases that affect our ways of perceiving and evaluating people from the targeted groups. Implicit bias affects individuals of all genders, which means that even other women tend to evaluate the achievements of women more negatively than they would if they thought they were evaluating men’s achievements. For instance, the same curriculum vitae can be assessed as better and the person behind as deserving of a higher salary, if the name at the top of it is male (Moss-Racusin et al. 2008; Saul 2013, 41). This said, it does not appear to be the case that implicit bias could always be found in assessments (see Birch et al. 2016). Yet the existence of implicit bias in academia has been demonstrated by a number of studies (e.g. Moss-Racusin 2012; Steinpreis 1999), and although these have not targeted philosophers specifically, there is little reason to presume that philosophers would be freer from implicit bias than other academics (see Saul 2013, 43–44).

Another mechanism of subtle discrimination is that of micro-inequities. These are “small harms” such as disrespectful gestures, being ignored or singled out on the basis of characteristics such as sex, race or age. It has been suggested that when they accumulate over time, they can result in low self-esteem and poor career success. The target and the perpetrator may both be unaware of the continuum of micro-inequities that they are involved in and that may slowly undermine the target’s chances of a satisfactory career in the extremely competitive field of philosophy. (Brennan 2013, 184–185.) Unsurprisingly, micro-inequities are intimately connected to implicit bias: we are more likely engage in them, if we are implicitly biased against individual members of targeted groups.Footnote 11

According to Samantha Brennan, the flip side of micro-inequities is the genius treatment received by some. She argues that academics may “detect” budding geniuses on rather flimsy grounds, and that the heightened expectations and good career opportunities faced by the chosen ones may in fact produce their good performances. (Brennan 2013, 185.) In a like manner, negative expectations can affect the performance of targeted individuals negatively.

As the phenomenon of stereotype thereat shows, this may not even require any belittling attitudes on the part of the members of the dominant group. When individuals of a stigmatised group are preoccupied with fears of confirming the stereotypes about their group, they often do worse in their tasks than they would otherwise. Jennifer Saul argues that stereotype threat can be provoked simply by visual reminders of the group’s underrepresentation in the field. In philosophy, situations like this occur easily, for instance, when a woman is presenting her work to an all-male audience in a room decorated with pictures of male philosophers. (Saul 2013, 41–42, 46–47.)

The problem with these subtle mechanisms of discrimination is that they are difficult for all parties to detect. Even if the targets identify these mechanisms at some level, they may be inclined to accuse themselves of paranoia. After all, they are not consistently harassed, and often they can only fathom the different kind of treatment some of their peers receive. The perpetrators, on the other hand, may consider themselves as enlightened people who embrace the ideals of equality and justice. It may be very hard for us to understand our own contribution to a culture of such subtle inequities, especially if we come from a privileged background.

The good news is that there are many ways to loosen the hold of the described inequities, and some of these are easy to put into action. For instance, we can make sure that the web pages and promotional videos of the discipline do not present the students and faculty in a narrow way (i.e. according to the White, male, able-bodied norm). Adding pictures of women philosophers, Black philosophers and Asian philosophers on the wall, to complement the row of White male philosophers, is a gesture that does not tax the department budget too heavily.

Even so, the example at hand brings us to the core of the resistance of philosophy towards change. We may be generous and fair in principle, but when we are asked to redefine philosophy to include “the others”, we tend to become less generous. This generosity does not necessarily exist even between Western philosophers of different philosophical leanings: what the other is doing, is not philosophy at all, or at best a caricature of philosophy.

Philosophy is precious to us philosophers, something we want to protect and cherish. At the same time, we tend to live within a very specific form of it, becoming habituated with its modes of thought and preferred questions, and the cultural heritage it carries. It is precisely this form of philosophical life that we wish to protect. For this reason, while we may be ready to increase diversity in the student body and staff, this readiness depends on the form of philosophical life that the persons in question have adopted as theirs. This policy shuts out those who might challenge the dominant views about philosophy, its limits and most central questions.

Consequently, making philosophy more inclusive may imply negotiations about the nature of philosophy. Kristie Dotson has argued that this transformation presupposes the following changes: (a) increasing the visibility and impact of underrepresented groups by hiring more people from these groups as staff, and (b) increasing diversity in the curriculum, so that questions that are of particular interest to the philosophers and students of the underrepresented groups are covered (Dotson 2012, 17). The problem is that even if steps towards this direction are taken, the work of the new hires may remain isolated from the general development of the discipline.Footnote 12 Positive discrimination can also raise doubts about the competence of scholars belonging to the underrepresented groups.Footnote 13

Change may be quite slow or non-existent when there are no real incentives for hiring individuals from underrepresented groups in academia. In Finland, the Equality Act of 1986 makes it possible for organisations to voluntarily use positive discrimination. This does not appear to produce results: it does not raise the percentage of women in the hired staff. (Husu 2007, 98.) The situation might be improved by endorsing a diversity of philosophical traditions in the curriculum and staff appointments, but, at least at the surface level, this goal appears to be in contradiction with the politics of education that demands departments to create recognisable profiles, in other words, to focus on specific themes and approaches. Acknowledging the situation, however, can help develop profiles that acquire depth through specific subthemes, for instance by intersecting with disability, feminist or Black studies. In other words, the problem does not have to remain unresolved: it is possible to combine specialisation and inclusiveness.

1.5 The Structure of the Book

By now, I have provided an overall discussion of the theme of women’s underrepresentation in philosophy, especially among philosophy students, summarising a number of empirical studies on the question. Chapter 2 discusses the role of pedagogical choices and philosophical conceptualisations in questioning and undoing power hierarchies. More precisely, I introduce some of the approaches and goals within feminist pedagogy in general and in the Gender and Philosophy summer schools, which will be discussed in more detail in the following chapters. In addition, I elucidate the concepts of “situation” and “alienation”, which provide the framework for the rest of the book.

Chapter 3, “The Historical Situation”, is the first of three chapters that describe and analyse the different aspects of the philosophy student’s situation. In this chapter I demonstrate how subjects—in this case philosophy students—should always be understood as subjects in time, who project themselves towards the future while being rooted in a specific historical soil. After a phenomenological discussion of temporality, I describe and criticise Michèle Le Dœuff’s psychoanalytically informed idea of the erotico-theoretical transference of women in philosophy. I also investigate the student’s relationship to the philosophical canon, analysing the possibilities of intimacy in the reading experience as well as those of idolatry, or the cult of the genius. I demonstrate why bringing forward the work and ideas of women predecessors is important, and propose a transformation in how the history of philosophy is considered: the historical ground should not consist of only the White and male canon, through which the history of philosophy is usually narrated, but also of the less-known voices of women and people of colour, through which another kind of historical “we” could be formed. Through a discussion of an experimental summer school titled Feminist Thought in Historical Perspective, I illustrate how the voices of women philosophers can be integrated into the discussion of the history of philosophy.

While the background survey and interviews inform all of the book, the student perspectives provided by them are elucidated particularly in Chap. 4, “The Affective, Social and Bodily Situation”. The chapter starts with a discussion of the emotional situation of students especially on women students’ passion for and alienation from philosophy. I then analyse the significance of students’ class and ethnic background for studying philosophy, demonstrating that, apart from the gender-related alienation, many other kinds of alienations can manifest themselves in the insecurities of philosophy students. In addition, I examine the tendency of philosophy teaching to distance itself from all the factual differences in embodied existence in favour of universalisation, and consider the possibility to teach from the viewpoint of the senses, engaging the body as a unity of the senses. I also demonstrate how the questions of the “disembodiment” of philosophy and of the tendency to shut feelings outside philosophical discussions were tackled in the summer school titled Philosophy of the Body by means of focusing practices, thinking “from the body”. In contrast, the summer school titled Feminist Political Philosophy included feminist analyses of violence, perspectives of the Global South and intersectionality, psychoanalytic theories, and discussions of universalism and difference, using problem-based learning as its pedagogical point of departure.

Chapter 5, “The Moral Situation”, explores the possibilities of feminist ethics in teaching philosophy and the ways in which it can deal with power struggles in the classroom. In this connection, I discuss the concept of generosity as it is conveyed in Beauvoir’s philosophy and in Debra Bergoffens’s analysis of it (1997). These philosophers describe generosity as an attitude towards the other that accepts the other’s freedom and allows the other to freely take or leave the gift that is offered to them. Furthermore, I demonstrate that care and generosity could and very often do act as ethical points of departure in teaching philosophy, and that cultivating these helps pass them on to new generations of philosophers. The chapter ends with a discussion of an experimental course on Care Ethics and Conflicts, in which students were invited to examine and discuss how experience, reason and emotion played a part in our moral reasoning.

The concluding chapter summarises the insights of the earlier chapters and suggests some possible questions for empirical research on the underrepresentation of women and other minorities in philosophy. In addition, I provide a checklist about the minimal requirements for teaching philosophy inclusively. This makes it easy even for the hastiest reader to think through better practices of teaching philosophy. Chapter 6 ends with a discussion of the political reality in which philosophy is taught, evaluating the possibilities for resistance in the context of diminishing resources and asking how we can act against the currents of politics of austerity, extreme competitiveness and precarisation of academic work. In addition, I discuss the possibilities of philosophy in crisis situations, and the philosophy class as a stronghold of intellectual freedom.

During the time I have worked on the manuscript of this book, we have experienced two globally significant events with pedagogical consequences. The first is the second rise of the #MeToo movement since 2017. The questions raised by the movement led me to discuss sexual and gender harassment in more detail in the introduction than had initially been my intention. The second globally significant event is the COVID-19 pandemic since 2020. Due to the pandemic, universities moved most of their teaching online. In terms of pedagogical possibilities and choices, the change is enormous and one that is likely to continue to have an effect on post-pandemic education. Remote learning benefits some students but appears to be detrimental to the majority in a situation in which informal face-to-face interaction is scarce. Whether or not this development has gendered effects, remains to be seen. While I was unable to provide an in-depth discussion in the context of this publication, I would venture to suggest that for the most part, the discussion of gender, situatedness and alienation can be adapted to different learning platforms without too many complications. Other ongoing crises, such as climate change and wars, are not discussed at length, even though I do acknowledge that they challenge the future-orientation of young people in particular and thereby have a significant effect on learning situations.

Finally, I want to address the criticism that my emphasis on the genders “woman” and “man” may generate. To focus on women does not mean that I would deny the reality of the gender spectrum, which includes genders such as “genderfluid”, “agender” and “uncertain”. Nor do I challenge the fact that in some instances a genderfluid or nonbinary person, for instance, can be misinterpreted as a woman, which can occasionally make it problematic to make generalisations about the genders of groups of people. For practical reasons, however, I have had to restrict the focus of my study to the underrepresented group that is most visible in philosophy and in the empirical studies I discuss in the book, namely people who identify themselves as women. In this definition, I include both cis and trans women. This said, I acknowledge that the experiences of cis women and trans women can differ in significant ways. The specific experience of the latter is discussed in Chap. 4.Footnote 14

One central issue in the book is the relationship between power and freedom. Often philosophical education is considered as intrinsically liberating—but is it? When and why does it create hierarchies and alienation? Are power hierarchies unavoidable in education? In what follows I highlight the ways in which feminist pedagogy has tackled the issues of power hierarchies and diversity.