The Philosophers' Cocoon

By Maja Sidzińska

How well do mothers fare in graduate admissions in academic philosophy relative to fathers and those who aren’t parents? How well do they fare on the academic job market in philosophy? How well do they fare in achieving tenure and promotion in philosophy departments? And how well do they fare in publishing? Presently, there is no data that could yield answers to these questions. While Academic Philosophy Data & Analysis (APDA) (Jennings and Dayer 2022), Sherri Lynn Conklin, Irina Aramonova, Nicole Hassoun (2020), Schwitzgebel and colleagues (2021), Zippia’s editorial team (2021), and Hassoun and colleagues (2022) disaggregate some graduate admissions, placement, tenure and promotion, and publishing data about our discipline by categories such as race and gender, whether or not members of the profession are mothers or parents is not captured by any of their data.

But we should capture such data. This is because we have information from other professional contexts that shows that motherhood in particular is a key driver of the gender pay gap (Grimshaw and Rubery 2015; Chung et al. 2017), and pay can be understood as a proxy for the kinds of markers of professional success considered above for academic philosophy. The status of being a mother explains up to 80 percent of the gender pay disparity (Miller 2017; Peterson 2024). In other words, it is primarily motherhood, and less so womanhood as such, that is associated with lower pay relative to male peers, and therefore with lower professional attainment. Exact figures are difficult to specify because data metrics, methods, and scopes vary dramatically across empirical studies. It is not always clear whether the findings do or do not control for other variables, for instance, for education or for work experience. Furthermore, studies diverge on the implied direction of explanation, with some suggesting—in line with neoliberal economic assumptions—that mothers’ choices (e.g., to end or pause their educations or careers) cause pay disparities, while others suggest that a lack of quality, affordable childcare causally structures such “choices.” The direction of explanation changes whether a study implies that it’s rational for mothers to earn less or not. And it changes whether a study implies that it is motherhood per se (however it is defined) or whether it is the social conditions under which people mother that causes professional disparities.

Setting these complications aside, and assuming academic philosophy is not significantly different from other professional contexts, the motherhood pay gap suggests that if we wish to close gaps in women’s representation in professional ranks and pay grades, then we should look to motherhood as a primary factor to be investigated for its relation to those gaps in academic philosophy. In that case, we should gather data on who the mothers are. And we should investigate what the factors are that are associated with motherhood that may cause professional disparities. But we should also gather data on who the fathers and parents are in order to investigate the relationship of members of these categories to each other relative to success in academic philosophy. Indeed, it might be the case that fathers in academia take on their fair share of parenting given the flexibility in academic schedules.

I pause here to clarify some terminology. Historically, “mother” has referred to female parents who gestate, lactate, and perform the majority of child care duties, while “father” has referred to male parents who typically do not. But these terms don’t necessarily align with people’s social identities or caregiving roles. Some people who gestate, lactate, or provide the majority of child care don’t identify as mothers, and some who do not perform these roles, do. Gestation, lactation, and primary child care can also come apart from one another, for example in cases of bottle-feeding or adoption of children. Nevertheless, parenting roles remain heavily gendered. As a generalization, “mother” and “father” still refer to typically-gendered parenting roles, though imperfectly, often obscuring the diversity of social identities and distributions of caregiving. I use these terms here because the overwhelming majority of social-scientific data is presented this way, including the data I cite. I also use such language to maintain a grip on the fact that parenting is not gender-neutral. However, I note the need for finer-grained data that reflects the diversity of ways that parenting people identify and distribute parental roles. This is particularly the case given that we already know, for instance, that these roles are racialized, leading to intersecting professional obstacles (Hassberg et al. 2022; Jacoby et al. 2024). Careful translational work may be needed to reconcile data sets that regard professional life and parenthood but that use different terms and variables or refer to partly overlapping categories.

While the existing work that captures some demographic features of philosophers is vitally important, and that tracks social variables that have long been known to affect members’ professional status in academic philosophy, additional empirical studies should be carried out that regard mothers’ and parents’ representation in academic philosophy. This is in the interest of learning more specifically about what kinds of factors are correlated with unequal representation in professional ranks and pay grades.

One important factor that impacts these outcomes in other professional contexts is time poverty, which is the lack of time for required activities (Giurge, Whillans, and West 2020), and which is experienced particularly by mothers (Hyde, Greene, and Darmstadt, 2020; Bishop 2022; Emens 2019; Conway, Wladis, and Hachey 2021). This is the result of the time-consuming nature of gestation, lactation, and primary child care responsibilities. While I assume it is intuitive why lactation or child care responsibilities are time-consuming, I suggest gestation is also time consuming because of the high number of medical appointments that are generally needed, as well as related needs such as prenatal classes, and other preparations. It is also time-consuming in an indirect sense as a result of the need to maintain a higher caloric intake give the energy costs of gestation (Thurber et al. 2019), and as a result of sleep loss and other physiological symptoms associated with pregnancy. Furthermore, adoption is likewise time consuming even before direct child care obligations begin given the legal and logistical preparations it requires.

Given that time poverty primarily tracks the experiences of mothers, rather than of women qua more general category, failing to track the status of mothers amounts to failing to track some of the major factors that contribute to not only mothers’ but also to women’s underrepresentation in academic philosophy. If the gender pay gap is primarily a motherhood pay gap, we need to understand what factors affect mothers’ participation in order to have any hope of knowing how to intervene on mothers’—and women’s—behalf. For instance, if it is time poverty that primarily affects mothers’ representation across professional ranks and pay grades, then not only should social policies be enacted that reduce mothers’ time poverty at national, state, and local levels, the institution of academic philosophy itself should enact policies to offset or at least to account for this specific obstacle. This is because attitudinal changes alone such as the evaluation of women or mothers as suitable for conducting philosophy (e.g., the removal of implicit bias), won’t level mothers’ playing field. Of course, correlation does not show causation, so strictly speaking, it cannot be presumed that by intervening in the time poverty experienced by mothers we could cause an improvement in their professional representation. But it is reasonable to infer this causal relationship; at least it is a hypothesis worth investigating.

Motherhood reveals the nagging underbelly of the problem of women’s underrepresentation: their material needs for leave for prenatal care, birth, and postpartum recovery, for lactation rooms and breaks, and especially for childcare. Such needs cannot be met by shifts in attitude nor by intellectual acknowledgment. They must instead be addressed by policies that equalize the risks and opportunities, and costs and benefits, of various reproductive roles and of various child care roles. As things stand, the capitalist economy at large—inclusive of academic philosophy—presumes a non-gestating, non-lactating, non-caregiving worker. These insights are not new, as they have been raised by many social reproduction theorists and other feminists besides (Bhattacharya 2017; Giménez 2018). The issue of women’s representation won’t be resolved unless we identify the causes that create it—and the causal levers that can alleviate it. I suggest that disaggregating data about mother and parent status is a first step toward that goal. Notably, over 84 percent of US women have given birth (which, while not being perfectly co-extensive with the percentage of mothers, is a strong indicator of that status) (Martinez and Daniels 2023). It would be telling to see what percentage of US women who are academic philosophers are mothers.

One option to address mothers’ time poverty in academic philosophy may be “stopping the clock” on time to degree for graduate students, and time to tenure review for instructors during their maternity or parental leave, and funding such leave. While many institutions have policies that stop the clock for purposes of tenure review, this is not legally required in the US. Interestingly, this may not be an effective means of achieving gender parity anyway, since stopping the clock may disproportionally benefit fathers (Jaschik 2016). (This suggests that additional empirical understanding is needed to get a clear view of the gendered nature of parenting; the causal levers that would equalize women’s representation in philosophy may not be obvious.) With regard to job market success, philosophy’s institutional bodies could develop policies that forbid search committees from counting CV gaps against candidates or asking about those gaps in interviews; while some institutions may already practice this, it is not legally required in the United States. With regard to representation in academic publishing, it appears that supports for childcare would be needed on a social, rather than at the institutional level (assuming institutions are not themselves providing childcare—an assumption which should itself be challenged). Policies with accountability mechanisms built in would be preferable, and policies must be tested for efficacy after implementation.

Should it be found that a factor other than time poverty is the more likely or primary one in contributing to mothers’ (and thus women’s) underrepresentation, then policies should be enacted that aim interventions at that factor. Of course, as with most socioeconomic disparities, the cause of mothers’ or women’s underrepresentation is multifactorial. But it behooves us to gain additional information about the importance of some factors relative to others for the purpose of intervening in the factors that can make the greatest difference for representation first.

Of course, it could be the case that empirical data on the status of mothers in academic philosophy would not show any disparity between their status and women’s more generally, or between their status and the status of fathers. In that case, we may reasonably (but not infallibly) infer that factors other than time poverty are the ones impacting women’s representation. A finding of a lack of disparity between mothers and women might suggest that it is predominantly the property of being a woman, and its associated features such as being evaluated as lacking “brilliance,” that is (unjustly!) the basis of women’s lack of representation. However, if it is the case that women who aren’t mothers are better represented, then, again, this finding would offer guidance for how to target remedies for the situation. Feminists have long known that parenthood is historically—and presently—characterized by highly gendered roles, with quite different norms that structure the nature of women’s and men’s parental obligations and work. At stake in further disaggregating data about professional ranks and pay grades in academic philosophy is not just finding out who is underrepresented, but gaining insight into what actions to take that would most efficiently level the playing field.

But the issue is not only about women’s and mothers’ representation across the ranks and pay grades of academic philosophy. More meaningfully including mothers in academic philosophy would expand the intellectual horizons of philosophy, and inform philosophical perspectives, including feminist ones, more broadly. While there is a large body of feminist philosophical writing on motherhood and parenting, it does not appear to get a significant amount of uptake in mainstream or “rigorous” philosophical settings. Furthermore, the shape of feminist concerns and theory may themselves be shifted if the percentage of mothers in academic philosophy approached that of the general population. (Does it? That is precisely what we should find out.) As Black feminists have pointed out, reproductive justice must include concerns for livable and just mothering conditions, not just for, e.g., abortion rights (as important as those are) (Luna and Luker 2013; Ross and Solinger 2017). Motherhood remains a niche topic, the insights of which are often perceived as distinctly unsexy, mundane, and lacking in philosophical significance. Yet the meaningful inclusion of mothers in academic philosophy might alter philosophy’s concerns, and bring the questions it asks closer to those of real life.

Acknowledgements: I would like to thank Martin Renner for the fact that this essay is not autobiographical. And I would like to thank Evangelian Collings for her feedback on an earlier draft.

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