This is an issue that gets kicked around in atheist blogs from time to time; a recent post by PZ raises it specifically with regards to the big names:
The Big Catches to bring in to an atheist meeting are people like Dawkins and Dennett and Hitchens — people who deserve their popularity and their reputations — but the women of atheism seem to be semi-invisible. Why aren’t we reaching out to, for instance, Susan Jacoby, and making her a more prominent face in atheism? She’s a wonderful writer, produced a book, Freethinkers, that was part of the early wave of godless writings, and every time I’ve heard her speak, she says interesting and challenging things.The problem isn’t dismissal. It’s casual disregard.
Though the issue may be important, the way of framing it, especially the question about Susan Jacoby, is misguided. The leading lights of contemporary atheism weren’t picked by anyone’s conscious choice. It was largely a matter of who already had a platform to be heard once popular interest in atheism took off. Before The God Delusion, Dawkins had a 30-year career of writing books on popular science that made many religious people uncomfortable. Before Breaking the Spell, Dennett had established himself as a leading philosopher of mind and evolution, whose books were popularly accessible even if they didn’t enjoy Dawkins’ degree of success. Hitchens was an established journalist. It was an anomaly when Harris built his career out of nothing in a few years. While Susan Jacoby wrote many books before Freethinkers, she never had Dawkins’ level of popular success–unlike Dawkins, Dennett, and Hitchens, I probably never would have heard of her if not for her “atheism book.” Expecting her to pull a Harris and skyrocket into Dawkins-level fame is unreasonable.
This doesn’t mean the gender of the top atheists is random, rather, it reflects the gender mix among top science writers and journalists, which in turn reflects what was going on in the world when today’s top science writers and journalists were first getting their careers off the ground. When Dawkins started working on his Ph.D., many people still saw feminism as a novelty. That’s a piece of history we can’t change.
On the other hand, the above makes gender imbalances among the younger segment of the atheist community (and pro-science and reason community generally) worrisome, because it means those imbalances may be with us for 40 years to come. That’s where we should be putting our effort; encouraging the work of young women and minorities is probably more attainable than turning Susan Jacoby into Dawkins.
in other words…education, reason, rationale and rebellion. the first 3 are self-explanatory. rebellion against just going along to get along. rebellion against mainstream society. the desire to ask “how and why”? and the ability to do so!
Over-privileged rich white males, who make up the majority in atheism, don’t want feminists around. Men in the atheist community drive all the feminists away. This is not an accident. It is quite deliberate.
They don’t want to have to think about things like women’s human rights being violated across America everyday, every time a woman is denied contraceptives or an abortion.
They don’t want to hear the feminist voices from the trenches of “the Other America.”
They don’t care about the feminization of poverty and lack of money to afford tuition for college and grad school — never mind a science degree.
Anyone who doesn’t have a PhD in some science field, and who is poor and female is not welcome. Lack of money and privilege to get a PhD in one of the “hard sciences” automatically renders one worthless and of no value. If you doubt this, you might want to read more here:
http://godlessfeminist.wordpress.com/
Women are not seen, even by atheists, as being human enough so that injustice and harm to women matters.
The women whom you would think would be welcomed into the limelight of atheist conferences, are hard-core feminists…women like me for whom a ticket to grad school was as unobtainable as a day trip to Sedna. Because I’m poor. Like most women across America.
There’s a lot of over-privileged penis inches invested in the “New Atheist” movement. And when money talks, it does so from white male mouths at the apex of the social order.
Jacquelin–
I’m not sure what you mean by “feminist” in the sentence “Over-privileged rich white males, who make up the majority in atheism, don’t want feminists around,” but if by “feminist” you mean “me,” that doesn’t surprise me, because your perceptions both of American society and atheist groups specifically are unhinged. I’ve never seen women drummed out of an atheist meeting. Indeed, there was an FFRF conference I went to a few years back where Julia Sweeney was everyone’s favorite act, but people walked out on Christopher Hitchens. Based on that experience, I would say that it’s safer to be a woman in the atheist movement than to think the Iraq war was a good idea (and I’d bet it’s safer than being pro-life).
The thing about needing a hard-science Ph.D. to be accepted in atheist groups is also bonkers. If the top-four atheist authors right now, only one has such a Ph.D. Dan Barker, who leads one of the largest (if not the largest), atheist groups in the country, is a college dropout for christssake.
Finally, while life in our society isn’t completely fair, it’s not true that being poor makes a Ph.D. unattainable. I’m in grad school right now because an admissions committee thought I was a good enough student to be worth paying to come to their school. I did have parents who could help me through undergrad, but the background of people at our program isn’t uniform–one of my friends grew up having to help shovel animal manure on his parents’ farm.
Finally, some advice, though you probably won’t listen to it: you come off as someone who feels like a failure at life, and is coping by blaming other people. Why such an approach may be tempting, other people will sense the negativity and think “I have to get away from this person,” and it will be a barrier to you getting anywhere in life.