You’re making me sorry I even brought up the case of mistaken identites, though! =) I was really interested in the discussion of blind vs. non-anonymous journal refereeing. I’d have to say—great points from Janice and Susanna notwithstanding—that I’m more with Brian on this issue. That is, I think that the practice of blind refereeing as it stands might simply hide its prejudices better. The editors who are making the final decisions (and the initial ones, too, for that matter!) see all the names, decide to whom to send the paper out, etc. That’s an enormous part of the ‘blind refereeing’ process that isn’t at all blind. It would be extremely interesting—as I think a couple of people have already pointed out—to see where exactly in the process paper submissions from women start to fall off the boat, so to speak.

… Unless, of course, I’m getting us mixed up again!

I know of two men to whom something similar has happened – Ross Cameron and Robbie Williams, both previously at St Andrews, now both at Leeds. Although this may not be a fair comparison, as it is widely believed to be at best indeterminate whether they are in fact distinct. On one occasion, attempting to express annoyance at the phenomenon, Robbie was heard to remark on how annoying it was that people kept calling him \‘Robbie\’.

We’ve all had the following experience: We’re in Q&A following a talk by someone well-established and a graduate student hesitantly asks a good question. Student’s question gets blown-off. A bit later in the discussion, a faculty member with some professional standing asks the same darn question, but more aggressively. Speaker is stumped.

Heck! Seen it? Many of us have done something like this at some time. This is the unconscious bias that even very, very good, liberal folks are subject to. Like it or not, at some time or other, almost all of us have evaluated someone’s contribution to a discussion based upon our perception of their professional standing.

Haslanger’s worry is that numerical minorities are too often playing the role of the hesitant grad student in the above tale. Her fear is founded in part on studies that show that “identical term papers, CVs and the like” are rated by evaluators more highly when they are thought to be those of men.

“Identical” is the important part here. Haslanger’s worry, as I understand her, is that sex alone may be playing an unconscious role in an editor’s evaluation of a paper’s worth and a department’s evaluation of a candidate’s cv. This makes double-blind refereeing at journals look like a good idea. As others have pointed out, a perfectly blind refereeing system is, as a practical matter, impossible. But I myself don’t see a good argument for not trying to approximate one.

There’s a danger that affirmative action arguments end up being half-successful here.

Everyone is very pro-affirmative action/quotas when it comes to the distribution of duties. But somewhat less keen when it comes to the distribution of rights.

One of the many bad effects of departments having such a poor gender balance is that many women get insanely high administrative workloads.

Of course, it is also a problem if people think that the only reason to have women involved in conferences, shortlists etc is tokenism, rather than (say) overcoming millenia of systematic biases.

Here’s another situation I’ve encountered more than once with people (OK, mostly men) who see themselves as consciously attempting to overcome gender bias: when a committee’s being formed, a panel being organized, speakers being invited to a conference, candidates being selected for interviews, etc., a list of names will get compiled, and then someone will say: “Oh, we still need a woman.” Now, on the one hand, this can be seen as a good thing—an attempt to compensate for whatever biases kept women from getting on the initial list. On the other hand, however, if you ask whoever said that WHY adding a woman to that list might be a good idea, you’re often met with a blank look or, sometimes, my favorite answer: “Well, we should really get ‘a woman’s perspective’ on [topic x].” Nothing like asking someone to singlehandedly represent over half the human race! The “we still need a woman” claim is also frequently linked with the (usually unconscious) attitude that what’s necessary is getting a woman—any woman—as opposed to someone who’s actually going to be a valuable contributer. This can lead to non-optimal people being invited, with predictable results, which then reinforces the opinion that working for equal representation is a bad idea, because there just aren’t that many ‘good’ women out there.

Here’s a mundane (but kind of funny) example of the unconscious ‘all women in philosophy are interchangeable’ belief at work: in my (wonderful!) 13-person department, there are 3 women. Two of us are about the same age and work in the same historical period, although on completely different topics. We look nothing alike. Yet, at some point, every single member of the department (including the other woman!) has called us by the other person’s name—something that’s never happened, to the best of my knowledge, to any of the men in the department, including those of the same age who work on similar topics. It’s a little enough thing, but it becomes pretty noticable when it happens over and over (and over!) again. Perhaps the best example of this was when the other woman got a paper accepted at a journal by an editor who mentioned in the letter how lovely it had been to talk to her at the conference the previous weekend. She hadn’t been at the conference—I had! (I lobbied for an acknowledgement in the footnotes, but I think she decided against it.)

In any event, my point is just that it’s not sufficient to advocate for proportional representation in journal submissions, acceptances, interivews, hiring, etc.—although those are all good and necessary things. We need to advocate for a better understanding of what the profession has to gain from such representation.

I think the suggestion in favor of blind refereeing (to the extent possible) is a really good one. It will work in favor, not just of women, but of younger philosophers of either gender. The thought that this manuscript on which I may be being unduly harsh may have been written by someone whom I respect keeps me, when I’m a referee, honest.

And it isn’t just volumes like Phil Perspectives that are not anonymous. Anonymity is optional at many journals. I’ve gotten papers to referee with a well-known philosopher’s name right under the title. It gives such people a leg up, and given the historical ratio of men to women in the field this will favor men over women, as well as the (possibly deservedly) well-known over the less well known.

Many times we will still have a pretty good idea who wrote the papers we read as referees. But that’s just to say we cannot achieve the ideal result. And actually, as long as the papers by people we don’t know about get respectful treatment due to the uncertainty involved, the good effects of such refereeing will accrue for most of the cases that matter – namely those where outsiders have something to say that needs to get a fair chance at a hearing.