Lloyd, Elisabeth A.

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&RQVWLWXWLRQDO)DLOXUHVRI0HULWRFUDF\DQG7KHLU&RQVHTXHQFHV$XWKRUV(OLVDEHWK$/OR\G6RXUFH+23267KH-RXUQDORIWKH,QWHUQDWLRQDO6RFLHW\IRUWKH+LVWRU\RI3KLORVRSK\RI6FLHQFH9RO1R6SULQJSS3XEOLVKHGE\7KH8QLYHUVLW\RI&KLFDJR3UHVVRQEHKDOIRIWKH,QWHUQDWLRQDO6RFLHW\IRUWKH+LVWRU\RI3KLORVRSK\RI6FLHQFH6WDEOH85/http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/669956 .$FFHVVHGYour use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp .JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org. .The University of Chicago Press and International Society for the History of Philosophy of Science arecollaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to HOPOS: The Journal of the InternationalSociety for the History of Philosophy of Science.http://www.jstor.org This content downloaded from 129.79.13.20 on Mon, 13 Jan 2014 13:06:52 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and ConditionsCONSTITUTIONAL FAILURES OFMERITOCRACY AND THEIRCONSEQUENCESElisabeth A. LloydIndiana UniversityMany of the commentators—let’s ignore their sex for the moment—suggestedincluding women in the Feyerabend conference. Then the question was raised,“but are they of the right quality, status, rank?” That is, do they bring down theaverage quality of the conference in virtue of their being of inferior status, or, inVincenzo Politi’s words, not “someone whose work is both relevant to the topic ofthe conference and also as widely recognized as the work of the invited speakers”(HOPOS-L archive, “CFP: Feyerabend Conference,” Tuesday, July 17, 2012,14:57:20)?It is extremely important that such a discussion of quality, status, and rankrecognize the scourge of evaluation bias and its long-term and pervasive con-sequences. One well-designed study this past year, published by the NationalAcademy of Sciences, established prominent evaluation bias among bothmale andfemale science faculty in their evaluations of a student applying for a managerialjob, who was randomly assigned either a male or a female name (Moss-Racusinet al. 2012). These professors examined the qualifications of the students anddecided whether to hire them, what salary to give them, and whether to mentorthem and howmuch to do so. The results were that bothmale and female scientistshired more men, gave them higher salaries, and offered more mentoring to them,even though the male applications were identical to the female applications.Whenprobed about their reasons for not hiring or mentoring the female applicants, theprofessors explained that they based their decisions on the inferior competence ofthe applicant: the female applicants were perceived as less competent by all professors(with identical applications between males and females). This is what “evaluationbias” looks like, and it has been established in many, many contexts since the1970s—this is only the most recent.Unless philosophers and historians of science wish to claim that they are notlike all other human beings and academics that have so far been tested and thatthey never exhibit the unconscious biases affecting all of their colleagues, bothmale and female, we must always take a serious degree of evaluation bias intoHO PO S l The Journal of the International Society for the History of Philosophy of Science142This content downloaded from 129.79.13.20 on Mon, 13 Jan 2014 13:06:52 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditionsaccount as a contextual factor in our judgments and actions. This means, forone thing, that evaluation bias has likely affected our meritocracy and thata woman in a professorial position is likely to be underemployed; that is, shelikely is qualified for a higher status position than the one she is in. This is also,of course, true for men, given the way the job market works today. But it isextremely important to remember, when offering speaking engagements toconferences, not to infer someone’s abilities from her academic positions or in-stitutions, given the likely operation of evaluation bias in her situation.The evaluation bias conclusions from a large pile of studies (see Moss-Racusin et al. 2012) indicate that promotion will also be more difficult for fe-male faculty and that, therefore, it will also be incorrect to read abilities off ofacademic rank. It goes without saying that evaluation bias will affect womenfaculty’s ability to get hired at the most high-prestige institutions, when evenlytalented with male professors. In addition, equally talented women will be lesslikely to be included in edited collections and top journals that are not com-pletely sex blind in their review process, due to evaluation bias (see preliminarystudies inHaslanger [2008] and Paxton et al. [2012]). And so on. It is extremelyimportant that the key comparisons are to equally talented men and not towhether a hiring or publication occurs at all. When standards of building mer-itocracies are undermined by evaluation bias, they no longer reflect real merit.The crucial point is that the existence of the documented evaluation bias pos-itively disables meritocracies—including that which is assumed in ventures likeconferences organized on meritocratic principles.Thus, the conversation about the Feyerabend conference—and, indeed, atthe Feyerabend conference—could have been improved by some more discus-sion about evaluation bias and its impacts on status, rank, and visibility of fe-male faculty and meritocracies in general. The resulting sex bias is just the sortof unconscious suppression of opinion that Feyerabend abhorred, as it reducedthe diversity of opinion that he favored in the pursuit of knowledge (Lloyd 1997).REFERENCESHaslanger, Sally. 2008. “Changing the Ideology and Culture of Philosophy: Not by Rea-son (Alone).” Hypatia 23:210–23.Lloyd, Elisabeth A. 1997. “Feyerabend, Mill, and Pluralism.” Philosophy of Science 64:S396–S407.Moss-Racusin, Corrine A., John F. Dovidio, Victoria L. Brescoli, Mark J. Graham, and JoHandelsman. 2012. “Science Faculty’s Subtle Gender Biases Favor Male Students.”Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA, forthcoming. doi:10.1073/pnas.1211286109.Forum: Pluralism? l S P R I NG 2013143This content downloaded from 129.79.13.20 on Mon, 13 Jan 2014 13:06:52 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and ConditionsPaxton, Molly, Carrie Figdor, and Valerie Tiberius. 2012. “Quantifying the Gender Gap:An Empirical Study of the Underrepresentation of Women in Philosophy.”Hypatia 27,no. 4:949–57.DATA, PLEASEHelen E. LonginoStanford UniversityWhat should we think when we hear female pronouns used as the generic in aroom filled primarily with men? Well, I suppose it does depend on what thetopic of conversation is, but without meaningful change represented not onlyby numbers of women but by the uptake of what female colleagues are (or couldbe) contributing to the discussion, the pronominal strategy seems not only shal-low but hypocritical. There are two kinds of issue here. One is the inattentive-ness to (if not exclusion of ) members of the community with something to say,regardless of their intellectual orientations. Another is the inattentiveness to (ifnot exclusion of ) members of the community identified with a particular pointof view. Women in the philosophy of science profession, with the exception ofa few extraordinary individuals, have mostly experienced the former. Feministsin the philosophy of science have experienced both.A recent survey focused onmeetings of the Philosophy of Science Associationcorrelated various demographic variables such as age and gender of responderswith their responses (Settles andO’Connor 2012). Among those reporting, sig-nificantly more women than men reported perceiving the climate at meetingsof the association and in the profession in general as sexist and exclusive. Whilereports of personal incivility and harassment were much lower than those aboutthe general climate, again more women than men reported being subject tosuch behavior. This tells us two things: that some significant fraction of theprofession, both male and female, perceives it to be exclusive and characterizedby sexist attitudes but that more women thanmen so perceive it.What is prom-ising for the future is that younger men are more likely than older men to per-ceive sexist behavior and gender and racial disparities.For the first 60 years of its existence, there had been only one woman electedto the position of president of the Philosophy of Science Association, MaryHesse. Then in 2007, Nancy Cartwright was elected. Perhaps this will openthe floodgates, as another woman was elected 4 years later. But visibility atHO PO S l The Journal of the International Society for the History of Philosophy of Science144This content downloaded from 129.79.13.20 on Mon, 13 Jan 2014 13:06:52 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

Constitutional Failures of Meritocracy and Their Consequences

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Constitutional Failures of Meritocracy and Their Consequences

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