Tuesday, May 13, 2014

Crowdsourcing: Data on Women Seeking/Receiving PhDs in Political Theory

We are trying to fill in the picture concerning gender imbalance (bias?) in the subfield of Political Theory by gathering data on the percentage of PhD students and PhD recipients who are women. (We will also investigate the status of women as professors of Political Theory, but we are focused here on who pursues and receives PhD's in Political Theory.)  This seems to be difficult information to come by, but perhaps it is out there.

The information we've found so far is not subfield specific.

For example, the NSF Survey of Earned Doctorates showed that women made up 41.7% of all "Political Science and Government" PhD's in 2012.  A few years prior, the philosophy blog Crooked Timber, published this chart based on the 2009 Survey of Earned Doctorates (which found that women earned 40% of Political Science PhD's that year) which compares the gender divide across different disciplines. This again addressed Political Science as such, and not Political Theory specifically. 

As for current PhD students, the information is even more limited. The most recent data available online from APSA concerning its membership reports that women constituted 39% of its student members in 2004.

So the available numbers indicate that women make up roughly 40% of Political Science PhD recipients in recent years. But this doesn't tell us anything about subfields or whether/how Political Theory compares to that 60/40 ratio. We also know very little about who is enrolled in PhD programs in Political Theory.

Does anyone have insights into how/where to track down such subfield specific information? Even better, would someone like to volunteer to tackle this question?

6 comments: