In May Reference Beebee2021, Helen Beebee – Professor of Philosophy at the University of Manchester – published an article in The Philosophers’ Magazine entitled ‘Women in Philosophy: What's Changed?’, which considered how things have changed over the past decade for women in philosophy. She highlighted some important progress that has been made in the notoriously male-dominated discipline; even so, many of the changes she highlights – which include the fact that women's underrepresentation in philosophy is now (but a decade ago was not) acknowledged and recognized as a problem, that this problem is now (but a decade ago was not) being actively researched and discussed, and that the discriminatory views of some of the most widely read philosophers are no longer being ignored – are more of the form ‘problem X is now widely recognized’ than ‘problem X has been solved’. Philosophy continues to lag behind other disciplines in terms of gender parity; and the more senior the level, the greater the gender disparity. Beebee highlights that while 48 per cent of philosophy undergraduates are female, this figure drops to 33 per cent of PhD entrants, and 25 per cent of professors. HESA (2021) data show that for higher education disciplines in the category of ‘Humanities & language based studies & archaeology’, UK academic staff are split roughly 50/50 between men and women, so philosophy lags far behind the average for disciplines in the category. Writing with Jennifer Saul in a 2011 report for the British Philosophical Association and the Society for Women in Philosophy UK, Beebee noted that, in terms of the balance of genders throughout the career stages, philosophy ‘more closely resembles the sciences than do most humanities disciplines’, yet it ‘lags behind all of these fields in trying to address the problem’. Despite some encouraging progress, that remains as accurate a description today as it was ten years ago.

Women in philosophy, then, remain underrepresented – or, as Kelebogile Zvobgo on Twitter recently suggested we rephrase it, ‘historically excluded’Footnote ¹ – and reaching gender parity is an ongoing battle. We're still not completely sure exactly why more women than men decline to pursue philosophy to the next stage, or why this problem is endemic to philosophy but not to, say, history – although, in their Reference Beebee and Saul2011 report on topic, Beebee and Saul suggested some possible explanations, including implicit bias, stereotype threat, and sexual harassment. Whatever the underlying mechanisms, it is clear that solving the problem and achieving gender parity require all of us in the discipline to pull together to make a difference to the cultural landscape of philosophy. Changing it from a discipline that is widely perceived as the preserve of old, white men into something more inclusive cannot be achieved by any one individual.

This puts us in a dilemma. Those of us who have run the gauntlet and carved out careers as women in philosophy in spite of its culture of misogyny invariably find ourselves in the position of needing to offer guidance, advice, and mentorship to more junior female philosophers. How, then, can we strike the right balance between impressing on them that they face difficulties that are not faced by their male peers, and helping to empower them to flourish as best they can in an imperfect system? On the one hand, emphasizing that the system is skewed against them risks encouraging a fatalistic attitude in which they conclude that there's no point even trying. But on the other hand, encouraging them to believe that their efforts will be rewarded and that it's within their power to advance in academic philosophy is fantasy: it ignores the significant obstacles to women's success in philosophy, and risks setting up young female philosophers to blame themselves if they don't achieve what they want to achieve, and what their male peers achieve.

This latter concern was discussed by the writer, lawyer, and political reporter Ephrat Livni in her Reference Livni2018 Quartz article, entitled ‘All Career Advice for Women is a Form of Gaslighting’. In that article, Livni argued that not only is it false to tell women that we can succeed if only we have the right attitude, the right tone of voice, the right appearance, and so on; it's also harmful. She wrote:

Livni's point is more general, of course: it's not only women who have been historically excluded from success in certain fields, including philosophy; but also people of colour, disabled people, people from impoverished backgrounds, and so on.

So what should we tell our female philosophy students, and the female junior staff whom we advise and mentor? This is something I think about a lot, for several reasons. One is that, at my institution, the student community is especially diverse. It's not uncommon for female students to outnumber male students in my undergraduate seminars, and our students are also more ethnically and culturally diverse than at many other institutions. This is something to celebrate – and it makes especially salient the issue of what to tell students about the discipline of philosophy and their place in it. I can't contemplate giving my students an all-male, all-white reading list without anticipating a silent ripple of ‘wtf is this?’ passing through my next seminar. Another reason is that I've taken on the role of Senior Tutor, which involves overseeing the pastoral care of Royal Holloway's philosophy students, meaning that the issue of how to help students thrive has become part of my job in a new way. Finally, I coach academics, and earlier this year I launched a podcast that deals with the problems and anxieties that academics (especially female ones) face. The headline of Livni's article has been ringing in my ears throughout all of this. The lesson that we as philosophers can draw from her article, I think, is that it's not just the misogynists and the people who don't care about equality who can harm the women who are trying to succeed in academic philosophy. Well-intentioned advice, too, can harm. It's not enough for women in philosophy to have people who will cheer them on, encourage them, and celebrate their wins. They need people who will do these things in a way that contextualizes their successes and disappointments with insights about where the system is making life harder for people like them, and where they can focus their efforts in order to succeed. Is it possible even to do this?

I think it is, although doing so requires a thoughtful and reflective approach to how we give advice. Some of the heavy lifting in this area is being achieved through the improvements that Beebee recognizes in her article: philosophy's gender imbalance is acknowledged as a problem that needs to be addressed, feminist philosophy has moved into the mainstream, there is better representation of women on reading lists and at conferences. This all means that young female philosophers can look around and see people like them, and they can read philosophical discussions of the sorts of problems they face. Placing too much emphasis on better representation is a risk, however. Important as it is for young female philosophers to have female role models, advisers, and mentors within the discipline, we need to take care to ensure that increased visibility of more senior female philosophers is a source of inspiration and encouragement rather than a stick that ambitious junior female philosophers can use to beat themselves. We don't want better visibility of female philosophers to lead young female philosophers to draw conclusions like, ‘All the women on my course reading list have made it in philosophy, so if I'm struggling, that must be because I'm not good enough.’

To be encouraging and supportive to young female philosophers while also recognizing that they are operating in an unjust environment that makes their academic and career success harder to obtain than for their male peers, I think it's helpful to reflect on what succeeding in an unjust culture looks like. It can be tempting to view success as if it lies behind a locked door to which you either have the key or you don't. On this locked-door view of success, if you're a rich, white, privately educated, cis man, you have the key to the door, your efforts will be recognized and rewarded, and you'll be ushered along the path to career success. But if you're not in that group, you don't have the key, and there's nothing you can do about that: the world (or at least, academic philosophy) needs to change before you can succeed in the way you wish you could. This locked-door view of success is over-simplistic and unhelpful for at least two reasons. The first is that it gives ammunition to the sort of people who want to deny that the culture of academic philosophy is unjust. Those sorts of people often point to successful women and say, ‘Look at them, their success proves that sexism isn't a problem – maybe those women who complain about sexism just aren't as good as the competition’. (And let's take a moment here to recognize that ‘the sort of people that want to deny that the culture of academic philosophy is unjust’ is not comprised wholly of nasty misogynists. It also includes the very women who are trying to succeed. As I mentioned above, these women are often quick to blame themselves for the setbacks they encounter, and – as I've seen time and time again in coaching clients – reluctant even to consider explanations for their disappointments that do not centre on their own ineptitude.) A second problem with the locked-door view of success is that it encourages women to believe that it's not within their power to succeed. Encouraging this sort of fatalistic attitude makes things worse for the women who are trying to succeed. Believing ourselves to be powerless to bring about certain changes in our lives is self-fulfilling. A 2011 study in Psychological Science showed that when people's belief in their own free will is undermined, they stop even trying (Rigoni et al. Reference Rigoni, Kühn, Sartori and Brass2011). And if women are powerless to achieve the things they wish they could achieve, they must wait around for the world to change before they can even hope for success, because even if they get involved in the sort of activism that's focused on bringing about the sorts of changes that need to happen, it's not a problem that they alone can solve. This means that, by encouraging this sort of fatalistic attitude in women – intentionally or otherwise – we become part of their problem. We become yet another obstacle in their path to success.

The truth about success is more nuanced than the locked-door view implies. Women, of course, can succeed in philosophy; it's just harder for them than for men. There is advice that we can give to female philosophy students and junior staff that will help them succeed, yet which neither constitutes gaslighting nor encourages a fatalistic attitude to success. Women can't remove all obstacles to their success singlehandedly, but they can remove some. And a really important point is that the obstacles that they can remove singlehandedly are the sort of obstacles that disproportionately affect women and people from other historically excluded groups. These are things like perfectionism, self-criticism, imposter syndrome, and the thought that philosophy isn't for people like them.

I want to present an alternative to the locked-door view of success, which I call the marathon view. Think of trying to succeed in our imperfect, unjust world as comparable to competing in a marathon while you're carrying a backpack. What you have in the backpack depends on who you are. Some people carry heavier loads than others, and that makes running the marathon harder work for them. Women carry heavier loads than men. People of colour carry heavier loads than white people. People who are especially self-critical carry heavier loads than people who are confident that they have what it takes to succeed. Perfectionists carry heavier loads than people who aren't perfectionists. It's not just the load you're carrying that affects how you do in the marathon, though. Some people have been able to afford skilled training to prepare for the competition. Some people have help with their domestic and family responsibilities, freeing up time and energy to focus on their training. Some people have better nutrition. Some people have supporters standing on the sidelines, cheering them on. Some people have grown up hearing that people like them never do well in marathons, or that nobody will like them if they compete or do well. Some people have to contend with a constant soundtrack of comments about what they're wearing, the size of their bottom, and whether they look good for their age while they're training and competing. Some people have a guide to the course, or have been tipped off about shortcuts. Some people have bribed the officials to pretend not to notice while they drive the course. And some people were never taught the terminology that's used on all the signs along the course showing you where to go and where to stop for water.

The result is that although the marathon isn't impossible for anyone to complete, it's much easier for some than for others. If all you know about two of the competitors is that they completed the course successfully, you can't conclude that the competition is fair, because you don't know what happened along the way and what they had to overcome to get there. Completing the course with a guide and a light backpack after intensive training and a good night's sleep is a different matter from lugging a heavy load, having no idea where you're going, and starting out exhausted having come straight from dropping your kids at school. The fact that there exist successful women in philosophy shows not that sexism is not an obstacle in the path of women who hope to follow in their footsteps, but that it's possible to succeed in spite of those obstacles. The numbers speak for themselves: that women make up only 25 per cent of philosophy professors demonstrates that for every woman philosopher who has attained the rank of professor, there are two who didn't make it through being worn down, unsupported, discouraged, or otherwise discriminated against in ways that would not have happened had they been male.

On the marathon view of success, there is some good news. Even after you've started the course, you can dump some of the weight that you're carrying. You can also do other things to help you, too – like pick up a guide to the course, rally some supporters to cheer you on, and find some energy drinks. In other words, although there are obstacles in the path of women who want to make it in philosophy, not all of them are equal. Some, though not all, can be removed. To succeed without exhausting themselves, young women philosophers need to know where and how to focus their efforts – and that's something that their teachers, supervisors, and mentors can and should help them with. Not only do young female philosophers often fail to recognize that a certain obstacle to their success can be removed; often, they don't even realize it's an obstacle. For example, many academics are extremely self-critical. Not all of them realize that it's possible, with time and support, to become less self-critical. And not all of them even realize that being extremely self-critical is a problem: many (especially, in my experience, junior ones) assume that everyone is similarly self-critical, or that being self-critical is a necessary precondition of success – after all, isn't it better to criticize ourselves than to have an anonymous reviewer do it for us?Footnote ²

All of us recognize that philosophical skill is something that requires study and practice to develop: were it not, we'd all be out of a job. But succeeding and thriving in a culture of misogyny, too, is a skill that must be learned and developed. It requires – among other things – gaining an understanding of the culture in which we're operating, knowing what success looks like, working out what conclusions it's appropriate to draw from our successes and failures (when do they reflect our own level of competence, and when do they reflect the culture surrounding us?), and (perhaps most challenging of all) not allowing anxiety and self-doubt to skew our ability to make insights about all of these things. Students and young academics from historically excluded groups need help with all of this, and philosophy departments need to know how to provide that help.