Constructing excellence: The gap between formal and actual selection criteria for early career academics
Autor/in:
Herschberg, Channah; Benschop, Yvonne; van den Brink, Marieke
Quelle: Trento: University of Trento (GARCIA working papers, 2), 2015. 1 online resource
Inhalt: Work package 7 centers on the revealing of implicit gender sub-texts in selection processes by deconstructing excellence. In this work package, GARCIA will identify the formal and informal criteria that are widely used to construct scientific excellence in academia and research. The focus on recruitment and selection helps to unpack how the formal criteria of the job description are understood, applied or ignored in committee deliberations. The construction of academic and research excellence is particularly salient for those workers who hold precarious positions, as the label of excellence is the key to their inclusion or exclusion in academia and research. Therefore, the core research question for this report 7.1 is concerned with the identification of the gap between the formal criteria and the actual criteria used in the recruitment and selection of early career academics. The project zooms in on the entrance to positions for postdocs, researchers and assistant professors; both permanent, tenure-track and non-permanent positions. At this stage, recruitment and selection processes act as a “bottleneck” in career progression for scientists where only a small minority among a pool of candidates are retained. The competition in an already greedy institution may bring along extra risk of producing inequalities. Statistics show how men succeed more than women to rise in the scientific ranks and leave the status of precarious worker behind. GARCIA will look into the gendered processes and practices that constitute the barriers for women to become part of or be eligible for the permanent staff. For the analysis of formal criteria, we will analyze HR-documents about career trajectories and job demands (to analyze how the HR policies are translated into formal job descriptions). We also perform a content analysis on job descriptions of vacancies between 2010-2014 in two academic fields (SSH and STEM). To examine the criteria as applied in practice, we use 1) focus groups and interviews with committee members and 2) analysis of appointment reports. Aim is to analyze a) how committee members construct excellence (the ideal candidate), what criteria are applied in practice and how do they relate to the formal criteria in the original job description and b) the gender practices in the recruitment and selection processes.
Gender in Academic Networking : The Role of Gatekeepers in Professorial Recruitment
Autor/in:
van den Brink, Marieke; Benschop, Yvonne
Quelle: Journal of Management Studies, 51 (2014) 3, S 460–492
Inhalt: The aim of this study is to build a theoretical framework to understand how gendered networking practices produce or counter inequalities in organizations. We introduce a practice approach combined with a feminist perspective in organization network studies. The notions of gender and networking as social practices allow better insights into what people say and do in networks, and the ways that networking produces or counters gender inequalities. We draw on empirical material about professorial appointments in Dutch academia and analyse the accounts of gatekeepers illuminating their networking practices. The accounts show which networking practices gatekeepers routinely use in recruitment and how these networking practices are intertwined with gender practices. We use the notion of mobilizing masculinities to understand the self-evident identification of men gatekeepers with men in their networks, and to understand how both men and women gatekeepers prefer the male candidates that resemble the proven masculine success model. Furthermore, this study provides the first empirical insights in mobilizing femininities in which women search for and support women candidates. We show how the gender practice of mobilizing femininities is a more precarious and marked practice than mobilizing masculinities. Mobilizing femininities in networking is intended to counter gender inequalities, but is only partially successful. Through constructions of ‘who you can trust’ or ‘who is a risk’, gatekeepers exercise the power of inclusion and
exclusion and contribute to the persistence of structural gender inequalities.
Gender equality interventions in the STEM fields : Perceptions, successes and dilemmas
Autor/in:
van den Brink, Marieke
Quelle: Women in STEM careers. International perspectives on increasing workforce participation, advancement and leadership. Diana Bilimoria (Hrsg.), Linley Lord (Hrsg.), Cheltenham: Edward Elgar Pub. Ltd. 2014, S 187–203
Slaying the Seven-Headed Dragon: The Quest for Gender Change in Academia
Autor/in:
van den Brink, Marieke; Benschop, Yvonne
Quelle: Gender, Work & Organization, 19 (2012) 1, S 71–92
Inhalt: In this article we propose a multi-level distinction between gender inequality practices and gender equality practices to come to better understanding of the slow pace of gender change in academia. Gender inequality resembles an unbeatable seven-headed dragon that has a multitude of faces in different social contexts. Based on an empirical study on the recruitment and selection of full professors in three academic fields in The Netherlands we discuss practices that should bring about gender equality and show how these interact with gender inequality practices. We argue that the multitude of gender inequality practices are ineffectively countered by gender equality practices because the latter lack teeth, especially in traditional masculine academic environments.
CEWS Kategorie:Europa und Internationales, Hochschulen, Netzwerke und Organisationen, Statistik und statistische Daten, Gleichstellungspolitik, Berufungsverfahren
Gender practices in the construction of academic excellence : Sheep with five legs
Autor/in:
van den Brink, Marieke; Benschop, Yvonne
Quelle: Organization, 19 (2011) 4, S 507–524
Inhalt: Academic excellence is allegedly a universal and gender neutral standard of merit. This article examines exactly what is constructed as academic excellence at the micro-level, how evaluators operationalize this construct in the criteria they apply in academic evaluation, and how gender inequalities are imbued in the construction and evaluation of excellence. We challenge the view that the academic world is governed by the normative principle of meritocracy in its allocation of rewards and resources. Based on an empirical study of professorial appointments in the Netherlands, we argue that academic excellence is an evasive social construct that is inherently gendered. We show how gender is practiced in the evaluation of professorial candidates, resulting in disadvantages for women and privileges for men that accumulate to produce substantial inequalities in the construction of excellence.
Transparency in Academic Recruitment : A Problematic Tool for Gender Equality?
Autor/in:
van den Brink, Marieke; Benschop, Yvonne; Jansen, Willy
Quelle: Organization Studies, 31 (2010) 11, S 1459–1483
Inhalt: Gender research has made a call for more transparency and accountability in academic recruitment and selection in order to overcome the inequality practices that have led to an underrepresentation of women among full professors. This paper provides insight into the multiple ways in which the notions of transparency and accountability are put into practice in academic recruitment and selection, and how this has enhanced – or hindered – gender equality. The methods employed consist of a qualitative content analysis of seven recruit-ment and selection protocols, interviews with 64 committee members, and an analysis of 971 appointment reports of full professors in the Netherlands. Our analysis contributes to the study of organizations in three respects. First, it shows that recruitment and selection processes are characterized by bounded transparency and limited accountability at best. Second, it explains that the protocols that should ensure transparency and accountability remain paper tigresses, because of the micropolitics and gender practices that are part and parcel of recruitment and selection. Third, it contributes to gender equality theory in organization theory by showing how a myriad of gender practices simultaneously increases and counteracts gender equality measures in academia.