I am an older woman who entered philosophy naively in the 70s. I barely noticed that I was about the only other woman in my undergraduate classes and at the graduate level, I was one of two in my cohort group. However, I found my professors in college and in graduate school nothing but respectful and they seemed to treat me equally to the men in my program. Most of my fellow students did likewise. I went to a Jesuit grad program so we are not talking about the most enlightened group in academia when it comes to feminism but I never felt belittled because I was a woman.  However, I was ful ..read more

What is it like to be a woman in philosophy? It means to be constantly underestimated and undervalued, and to only be seen as a sexual object by faculty members. This started as an undergraduate, when a faculty member decided that me being interested in his work was synonymous with me being interested in him sexually or romantically, and is ongoing every time people don’t take my viewpoint seriously because I am a woman. What’s just as bad or even worse is that when I try to address the sexism in this overwhelmingly male faculty (I am a graduate student), everyone (mostly men) denies that it’s ..read more

I was a young philosophy student and the first person in my family to go to college. I transferred into a state school from community college. I worked so hard and I still doubted myself. I took an ethics class that was required of all undergraduate students. I asked questions during class and my male professor started calling me over after class to talk. I admired this philosophy professor because he taught ethics and I believed that someone who taught ethics would be the last person to hurt me. He invited me to his office. We talked for hours in there, with the door closed. He was old enough ..read more

One of my first philosophy teachers was a doctoral candidate with a reputation for befriending his students. What most stood out to me was that he taught in a way that encouraged collaboration, rather than combativeness. I soon gleefully joined the group of folks who congregated with him after class, thinking I had found my people.  Less than a year later, I was enrolled in a second course with him, and we make plans to get together alone at night for the first time. We go for drinks (at my suggestion, via the suggestion of a (male) friend who had done so in the past). The teacher advoca ..read more

I studied philosophy in undergrad at a state school (with no grad program in philosophy). The school itself was highly diverse, and the department was more diverse than the average philosophy department. About half the faculty were women. Of the three presidents elected by the philosophy club while I was there were, none were men. I took a required course with an elderly male tenured professor. I hated everything about it, from the structure of the course to the assigned readings to the in-class discussions. Though there were a fair number of women in the class, there were (as there always ar ..read more