It’s common in philosophy departments to have fewer women on faculty than men. In our Ph.D. granting institution (at least while we were there), one third of the faculty were women. There is a gender gap. A gender gap occurs when women make up a disproportionately low percentage of a group when compared with the percentage of potential women members in the discipline or workforce (Thompson 2017). The gender gap in philosophy occurs on all levels; although the faculty gender gap is striking. Only one philosophy department in the US, as of 2018, had more than 50% women faculty, while all other departments had fewer than 50% women, most with less than 30% women faculty. The majority of departments had an average of just 25% women faculty (Conklin et al., 2018).
So far, more fine-grained data on the faculty gender gap demonstrates a gap between nontenured women associate professors and tenured full professors. This is unsurprising, given that more senior professors are an artifact of the educational system of previous eras, in which fewer women than today made it to and through professorial ranks. However, it’s unclear whether the decreasing representation of women as rank increases is a result of historical barriers or is partially a result of persisting barriers.
Yet it seems that this is not merely a historical artifact. According to NCSES (1994–2015), women make up 27% of the Ph.D.s awarded in philosophy, yet women only account for 20% of full professors today (Conklin et al., 2019). Thus, the difference in the gender gap between assistant professors and tenured faculty is not merely an artifact of how many women applicants are in the pool. However, as Conklin et al. (2019) also notes, other factors may contribute to the rate that women are hired and tenured, such as the size of the applicant pool and wait times between hiring and tenure (p. 856).
One potential cause of this gender gap at higher academic ranks is that women publish at significantly lower rates than men in top journals. According to Wilhelm et al. (2018), in the top 25 philosophy journals ranked by the Philosophical Gourmet Report, women publish between 14–16% (p. 1447). Publication plays a large role both in hiring and in tenure. Since the percentage of women faculty has a positive effect on reducing the gender gap in philosophy, and there is a correlation between publication and tenure rates, there is good reason to strategize how to improve women publication rates in top philosophy journals. It is unclear whether women publish less because they submit fewer articles than their male counterparts or whether they are more likely than their male counterparts to have their submissions rejected (Wilhelm et al., 2018, p. 1459). If more articles are rejected one reason may be that those writing from diverse perspectives may be seen as failing to follow strict disciplinary norms (Dotson 2012). Whether women submit less or are rejected more (or both), the low publication rate suggests a possibility for intervention: research and writing support.
So, how can we increase representation of women faculty in philosophy? One way is to create a pipeline of women scholars on track to fill faculty positions. We propose an intervention, “the writing workshop,” which takes a holistic approach to improving research and writing. This writing workshop presents graduate students with a method to develop a habitual writing habit, training students to write more frequently to meet the demands of publication rates. While faculty might benefit from this support as well, intervening at the doctoral level provides students with the tools they need to thrive in academia before a tenure clock starts ticking. We predict an intervention at the doctoral level would be more effective than one at the faculty level, because doctoral students have more time to hone and develop their writing skills post-intervention before major milestones like the job market and tenure.
In this doctoral writing workshop model, participants learn to write regularly, to make long-term, medium-term, and short-term plans for their writing and research, to write with academic structure and styling, to provide and receive frequent feedback on writing in progress, and to reframe rejection. A pilot study using this intervention on doctoral students in humanities, social sciences, and education demonstrated that, after the intervention, participants enjoyed writing more, felt more confident in their own writing abilities, and severed the association between writing and inspiration. The intervention taught students to write productively in shorter blocks of time. Additionally, the intervention helped students with planning a research pipeline and breaking it down into manageable chunks (Sarnecka, et. al., 2022).
We hope to run a mixed-methods study of a version of this intervention tailored for philosophy graduate students. Since 2019, we have been running and tailoring workshops on this model, both for philosophers specifically and for doctoral students more generally. Our anecdotal observations in these workshops show the power of this sort of intervention. From our experience of how the workshop affects participants, we have curated a set of quantitative measures and questions for qualitative interviews. Our hope would be to formally collect and publish data on the effectiveness of the workshops.
The remainder of this post provides information on the basic building blocks of the intervention, the writing workshop model, below. While the authors of this paper had input on course materials for the overall study, the first author on the study was a quantitative cognitive scientist. For that reason, some of the materials are less appropriate for a humanities audience. We have since modified and augmented original materials to better support humanities graduate students in navigating their specific literature and academic publishing in the humanities and interpretive social sciences. The main structure of the writing workshop remains the same.
Each meeting is run for 3 hours and includes four activities:
- Quiet writing time: we write quietly together to foster a sense of communal writing
- Check-in: the facilitators check-ins with all participants to see how the week went and help troubleshoot problems
- Skill-building: discuss the readings assigned each week (see sample syllabus below).
- Feedback forum: each week we read and edit a short piece of writing from one participant in real time
We encourage philosophy departments to run these writing programs. All of the original materials for employing this model of writing workshop are available on Open Science Framework (https://osf.io/ftuhp/). The authors have now been running these workshops for over two years and can provide insights for those interested in adapting the model to their circumstances, especially to those teaching philosophy graduate writing courses and graduate students who would like to start their own workshops. Below is a sample syllabus with suggested readings. The syllabus is scheduled for a 10-week quarter, but there are additional topics at the end. Email the authors at renag@uci.edu for access to the reading materials. We will gladly supply them!
Sample Syllabus
10:00-11:30am: Introduction & Housekeeping
Ice Breaker & introduce names/pronouns, etc.
Make sure everyone has access to Shared Drive
Go over method of the writing workshop
11:30pm-12:00pm Tools of the Writing Workshop
Accountability: writing logs & rejection collection
Sign up for feedback forum & weekly readings
Reminder: Next week optional extra hour for next week
12:00-12:30pm Academic Writing
Benefits of writing groups & community in academia
What are your writing assumptions?
Read: “Introduction” The Writing Workshop – Barbara Sarnecka
Chapter 1 “The Workshop” The Writing Workshop – Barbara Sarnecka
12:30pm-1:00pm
Prompted quiet writing time: What do you hope to get out of graduate school?
Why are you in graduate school?
Why are you working with the people you are working with?
What skills do you want to have upon leaving graduate school?
Week 2
10:00-11:30am: QWT
11:30am-12:00pm: Check in
1:50pm-1:30pm: Planning
Read: Chapter 2 “Planning Your Time” The Writing Workshop – Barbara Sarnecka
12:30pm-1:00pm: Feedback forum
1:00pm-2:00pm: Optional Planning Hour
Week 3
10:00-11:30am: QWT
11:30am-12:00pm: Check in
12:45pm-1:30pm: Get Ready to Practice
Read: Chapter 3 “The Practice of Writing” The Writing Workshop – Barbara Sarnecka
Read: Chapter 1 Becoming an Academic Writer – Patricia Goodson
Optional: Chapter 3 “Getting Started Writing” and Chapter 4 “From Zero Draft to First Draft” Writing Your Dissertation in Fifteen Minutes a Day – Joan Bolker
12:30pm-1:00pm: Feedback forum
Week 4
10:00-11:30am: QWT
11:30am-12:00pm: Check in
12:45pm-1:30pm: Abstracts
Read: Chapter 3 “Abstracting Your Article” Writing Your Journal Article in 12 Weeks – Wendy Belcher
Optional: “A Strategy: Tiny Texts” in Writing for Peer-Review Journals
pgs. 59-68)
Optional: Chapter 7 “ Presentations” The Writing Workshop – Barbara Sarnecka
12:30pm-1:00pm: Feedback forum
10:00-11:30am: QWT
11:30am-12:00pm: Check in
12:00pm-12:30pm: Input and Output Seasons
Read/Listen: YGT 11: Input and Output Seasons | Dr Katie Linder
Read: “The Eureka Phenomena” by Isaac Asimov
1:30pm-2:00pm: Feedback forum
Week 6
10:00-11:30am: QWT
11:30am-12:00pm: Check in
12:00pm-12:30pm: Literature Review
Read: Chapter 5 Writing Your Journal Article in 12 Weeks – Wendy Belcher
Optional: Chapter 4 “Literature Reviews” The Writing Workshop – Barbara Sarnecka
12:30pm-1:00pm: Feedback forum
Week 7
10:00-11:30am: QWT
11:30am-12:00pm: Check in
12:00pm-12:30pm: Designing Your Project
Read: Chapter 1 “Finding the Right Conversation” Designing Research for Publication (pp. 2-20)
12:30pm-1:00pm: Feedback forum
Week 8
10:00-11:30am: QWT
11:30am-12:00pm: Check in
12:00pm-12:30pm: Paragraphing & Structural Clarity
Read: Chapter 8 “Paragraphs” The Writing Workshop (pp. 235-263) (Jess)
Reread: Revise to continue your thinking, Chapter 3 “The Practice of Writing” (pp. 96-103)
12:30pm-1:00pm: Feedback forum
Week 9
10:00-11:30am: QWT
11:30am-12:00pm: Check in
12:00pm-12:30pm: Writing Style & Sentence-level Clarity
Read: Reading: Chapter 9 “Sentences” – Barbara Sarnecka (pp. 265-289)
Read: Chapter 10 “Words,” The Writing Workshop – Barbara Sarnecka (pp. 291-323)
12:30pm-1:00pm: Feedback forum
Week 10
10:00-11:30am: QWT
11:30am-12:00pm Check in with Writing Log
12:00pm-12:30pm: Co-authorship/Sharing Ideas
Read: Standing in the Shadow of Giants: Plagiarists, Authors, Collaborators
(Perspectives on Writing) by Rebecca Howard
Read: Myra’s blog
12:30pm-1:00pm: Feedback forum
Other Possible topics include
Presentations
Chapter 7 “ Presentations” The Writing Workshop – Barbara Sarnecka
Grant Writing
Read: Chapters 51 & 52 in The Professor is In – Karen Kelsky
Optional: Chapters 53 & 54 on Post-Doc applications The Professor is In – Karen
Kelsky
Optional: Chapter 6 “Proposals” The Writing Workshop – Barbara Sarnecka
Titles
“Tempting Titles” (Chapter 6, pgs. 63-75) in Stylish Academic Writing by Helen
Sword
Engaging with Reviewers & Editors
Read: Chapter 7 “Engaging with Reviewers and Editors” Writing for Peer-Review Journals (pp. 127-144)
Optional: Chapter 8 “Paragraphs” The Writing Workshop – Barbara Sarnecka
How to Choose the Right Journal for Your Article
Read: Chapter 2 “The Reader” Writing for Peer-Review Journals (pp. 29-49)
Read: Reading: Chapter 4, “How to Write a Journal Article in 12 weeks” – Wendy Belcher
Optional: Chapter 6 “Proposals,” The Writing Workshop – Barbara Sarnecka
Readability and Imaginability
Read: Chapter 9 “Sentences” The Writing Workshop – Barbara Sarnecka
Optional: Stylish Academic Writing by Helen Sword
Optional: Chapter 10 “Words” The Writing Workshop – Barbara Sarnecka
Rena Beatrice Goldstein
Rena Beatrice Goldstein is a Mellon Faculty Fellow at the University of California, Irvine. Her research focuses in the field of social and applied epistemology, with an emphasis on 20th-century analytic philosophy, virtue epistemology and the philosophy of education. Her work has appeared in Philosophia, Educational Theory, Pre-college Philosophy and Public Practice, and in an edited volume published by Routledge. Goldstein has taught courses in writing, introduction to philosophy, and critical thinking at community colleges and Cal State schools in the Los Angeles area. Goldstein was the recipient of the Kavka Endowed Prize for excellent scholarship in 2019, and the 2020-2021 Svetlana Bershadsky Graduate Student Community Award for her commitment to improving graduate student life at UCI.
Darby Vickers
Darby Vickers is an assistant professor of philosophy at University of San Diego (starting Fall 2022). She received her Ph.D. in philosophy from UC Irvine in 2021. Her research focuses on expertise and skill acquisition and transmission and sits at the intersection of ethics, epistemology, and philosophy of education. In her research, she draws on contemporary philosophy and cognitive science as well as her training in Ancient Philosophy. She has co-authored articles on ethics of artificial intelligence and doctoral student education.
