indirectly, more female students means more female Ph.Ds means more female professors
That’s what we hoped for in the physical/biological sciences. Then we discovered we had a glass ceiling problem. We have more than enough female grads now, more than half in some programs, but not enough become PhD students. Last I heard, people who were looking into solving this problem had come to a conclusion that it wouldn’t just resolve itself with time and needed active intervention, in part by deliberately creating female role models. (They’re trying but so far no very notable successes on the statistical level.)
This is true for my university (Hebrew U of Jerusalem) and other Israeli universities, and from what I’d heard in many other parts of the Western world as well. Is your philosophy dept. different?
When I talk about “my department”, I mean the grad students—we don’t interact very much with any but the most avid undergrads, except in the capacity of the TA/student relationship. So by saying that we need more girls, I mean we need more female Ph.D students.
Oh right, sorry :-) I assume the undergrad’s POV too easily because I am one.
When existing grad students, who will eventually become professors, want more girls, that should be the best and most direct solution. I wish your department all success in this.
There seems, thankfully, to be some new attention by the admissions people to the issue. I was the only girl admitted in my year, but this year we got two. (Also, two of the new admits were minority races, while I don’t think that’s the case with any but perhaps a couple of ABDs who were here already.)
That’s what we hoped for in the physical/biological sciences. Then we discovered we had a glass ceiling problem. We have more than enough female grads now, more than half in some programs, but not enough become PhD students. Last I heard, people who were looking into solving this problem had come to a conclusion that it wouldn’t just resolve itself with time and needed active intervention, in part by deliberately creating female role models. (They’re trying but so far no very notable successes on the statistical level.)
This is true for my university (Hebrew U of Jerusalem) and other Israeli universities, and from what I’d heard in many other parts of the Western world as well. Is your philosophy dept. different?
When I talk about “my department”, I mean the grad students—we don’t interact very much with any but the most avid undergrads, except in the capacity of the TA/student relationship. So by saying that we need more girls, I mean we need more female Ph.D students.
Oh right, sorry :-) I assume the undergrad’s POV too easily because I am one.
When existing grad students, who will eventually become professors, want more girls, that should be the best and most direct solution. I wish your department all success in this.
There seems, thankfully, to be some new attention by the admissions people to the issue. I was the only girl admitted in my year, but this year we got two. (Also, two of the new admits were minority races, while I don’t think that’s the case with any but perhaps a couple of ABDs who were here already.)
Out of how many total people admitted each year?
I was one of five; I think this year there were seven total.
Edit: Total for the whole department, we have 43 students, eight of whom are female (counting me).