Although they note that the reason for the gender differences in philosophical intuition is still unknown, and while they do not claim to suggest that differences in intuitions are the only factor involved, their intention is to offer some speculations about the effect of these differences. According to them, the fact that women have the “wrong” philosophical intuition more frequently than men may be one of the factors that exclude them from the “Philosophers’ Club” 3. Nonetheless, in their paper they focus on one of these factors that (they believe) may significantly contribute to this phenomenon, namely the differences in intuitions between women and men. B&S’s hypothesisģB&S stress that the gender imbalance in philosophy has more than one cause. Further, in the last two paragraphs, I discuss whether intuitions are gendered by showing the difference between weak and strong gendered notions, and I suggest that intuitions are gendered in a weak sense, namely they are appropriate to a social male role. In the second part of the paper, I indicate why B&S’s approach is inadequate, by arguing that their thesis does not comply with the view that gender is a social construction. In the first, I present B&S’s view as characterized by two theses: (i) there are significant differences between men and women in intuitive responses to some philosophically important thought experiments (ii) women’s intuitions do not accord with those that professional philosophers insist are correct. What are the causes of this gender disparity? Might gender differences help to explain the gender gap in philosophy departments? Recently, Wesley Buckwalter and Stephen Stich (hereafter B&S ) have argued that women and men tend to have different philosophical intuitions and that these differences may play a role in explaining the under-representation of women in philosophy in the English speaking world 2.ĢIn what follows, I defend the view that intuitions are in part socially constructed and a product of stereotypical behaviours, and argue that philosophical intuitions are gendered. 2 B&S precise that they have found this difference in contemporary American and Canadian women and me (.)ġAlthough in recent decades many departments have been committed to equal opportunity policies, women remain a minority in academia and are seriously under-represented in philosophy 1.
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