What professors do in peer review : Interrogating assessment practices in the recruitment of professors in Sweden
Autor/in:
Mählck, Paula; Kusterer, Hanna Li; Montgomery, Henry
Quelle: Gender Work Organ (Gender, Work & Organization), 54 (2020) 2, 9 S
Inhalt: Sweden is known for its political will to gender equality. Sweden is also a country with a strong tradition of transparency in university recruitments. In this article, the assessment practices in the appointment of full professors in one Swedish university are investigated from an intersectional and postcolonial perspective on gender and place/space. Using a multimethod approach to investigate written evaluations of applicants, recruitment group meeting minutes and interviews with reviewers, the results show that there is great variation in how evaluation criteria are applied and filled with meaning. Moreover, in more than half of the appointment decisions the reviewers disagreed. The interview results show a structural bias operating towards researchers applying from non‐Western university contexts. At an aggregated level, national applicants have 3.88 times greater chance to be proposed for a position and national women applicants are the most likely to be proposed for the position.
Schlagwörter:Berufungsverfahren; Gender; intersectionality; intersektionale Perspektive; Intersektionalität; Peer-Review; Schweden; Sweden
CEWS Kategorie:Diversity, Europa und Internationales, Geschlechterverhältnis, Hochschulen, Berufungsverfahren
Quelle: Gender Work Organ (Gender, Work & Organization), 35 (2019) 7, 248 S
Inhalt: Scholars agree that gender inequality is systemic and that participants in gender equality interventions need knowledge on gender inequality processes. However, a detailed view on the specific characteristics of this knowledge is as yet missing. This article aims to contribute to gender equality interventions by conceptualizing and visualizing systemic gender knowledge as an important condition for transformational change. Combining gender and participatory system dynamics literature, this article first introduces the concept of systemic gender knowledge. This concept captures two main characteristics that make gender knowledge systemic: knowledge on the interaction of gender inequality processes and endogenous thinking, here implying a focus on the organization as the relevant level of analysis. In addition to this conceptual contribution, the research contributes methodologically to the gender inequality inter-vention literature by designing a visualization process, translating written texts into system dynamics models which enable exploration of systemic gender knowledge.
Finally, the research contributes empirically by exploring the systemic gender knowledge of participants in two science research institutes of a Dutch university, finding shifts in both characteristics of systemic gender knowledge. This enables researchers to discern whether gender equality
Myriad potential for mentoring : Understanding the process of transformational change through a gender equality intervention
Autor/in:
Leenders, Joke; Bleijenbergh, Inge L.; van den Brink, Marieke C.L.
Quelle: Gender Work Organ (Gender, Work & Organization), 4 (2019) 2, 139 S
Inhalt: This article contributes to understanding transformational change towards gender equality by examining the transformational change potential of a mentoring programme for women, a type of gender equality intervention both criticized and praised for its ability to bring about change. Drawing upon an empirical case study of a mentoring programme for women academics in a Dutch university, we explore three dimensions of transformational change: organizational members (i) discussing and reflecting upon gendered organizational norms and work practices; (ii) creating new narratives; and (iii) experimenting with new work practices. Our findings indicate five specific conditions that enable transformational change: cross‐mentoring, questioning what is taken for granted, repeating participation and individual stories, facilitating peer support networks and addressing and equipping all participants as change agents. We suggest that these conditions should be taken into account when (re)designing effective organizational gender equality interventions.
‘If you put pressure on yourself to produce then that's your responsibility’ : Mothers’ experiences of maternity leave and flexible work in the neoliberal university
Quelle: Gender Work Organ (Gender, Work & Organization), 26 (2019) 6, S 772–788
Inhalt: Women remain underrepresented in senior positions within universities and report barriers to career progression. Drawing on the concepts of Foucault and Bourdieu, with an emphasis on technologies of the self, this article aims to understand mothers’ academic career experiences. Interviews were conducted with 35 non‐STEMM (science, technology, engineering, mathematics and medicine) academics in Scotland and Australia, to reveal the gender dimensions of parents’ academic careers, in neoliberal university contexts. The data suggest that there are tensions between organizational policies, such as maternity leave and flexible work, and the contemporary demands of academic labour. New managerial discourses which individualize and make use of moral systems are particularly effectual in driving women to take up marketized research activity and compromise leave entitlements.
Quelle: Gender Work Organ (Gender, Work & Organization), 46 (2019) 2, 411 S
Inhalt: Despite increasing geographic mobility among academic staff, gendered patterns of involvement in academic mobility have largely escaped scrutiny. Positioned within literatures on internationalization, physical proximity, gender and parenthood in academic mobility and understandings of gender as a process enacted through both discursive and embodied practices, we use discourse analysis based on interviews with academics in New Zealand to examine differences in language that create differing realities with regards to gender and obligations of care in academic mobility decisions. The findings reveal how academic mobility is discursively formulated as ‘essential’ to successful academic careers, with the need for frequent travel justified despite advances in virtual communication technologies. Heteronormative discourses are shown to disrupt and fragment the opportunities female academics have to engage in academic mobility. However, we also uncover ways in which these discourses are resisted, wherein fathers articulate emotional strain associated with academic mobility. The article shows how discourse works to constitute the essentialization of academic mobility, and the uneven gendered practices associated with it, whilst also giving voice to gender inequities in academic mobility from the southern hemisphere.
Quelle: Gender Work Organ (Gender, Work & Organization), 27 (2019) 2, S 129–148
Inhalt: Universities are increasingly expected to demonstrate the wider societal impacts of academic research. Yet women management scholars were disproportionately under‐represented in leading impact cases in the UK's REF (Research Excellence Framework) 2014. An analysis of 395 REF impact cases for business and management studies with an identifiable lead author revealed that only 25per cent were led by women, of which 54per cent were sole authored. Based on 12 in‐depth interviews with women impact case writers, we use Acker's inequality regimes framework to understand invisible and socially constructed gendering of the UK's policy that is designed to evaluate research impact. In a knowledge‐intensive workplace dominated by men, the shape and degree of gendered bases of inequality, systemic practices, processes and controls result in sub‐optimal talent management and gendered knowledge. We call for university leaders to be proactive in addressing barriers that fail to support or recognize women's leadership of research impact.
Excellent and gender equal? : Academic motherhood and ‘gender blindness' in Norwegian academia
Autor/in:
Thun, Cecilie
Quelle: Gender Work Organ (Gender, Work & Organization), 27 (2019) 2, S 166–180
Inhalt: This article explores Norwegian female academics' experiences with academic motherhood in an organizational perspective. A main finding is that academia as an organization is greedy, uncertain, and has ‘blind spots' that reveal gender bias related to gender and parental status, especially mothers. By analysing the link between gendered organization of work and the legitimatizing of gender inequality, the article reveals ‘gender blindness' in the academic organization concerning gender and parental status. The article concludes that changes in academia — in line with academic capitalism — may indicate that the Norwegian model of work–life balance is under pressure. This article suggests that the organizational conditions for academic motherhood are important factors in order to understand the persistence of gender inequality.
New managerialism in the academy: Gender bias and precarity
Autor/in:
Steinþórsdóttir, Finnborg S.; Brorsen Smidt, Thomas; Pétursdóttir, Gyða M.; Einarsdóttir, Þorgerður; Le Feuvre, Nicky
Quelle: Gender Work Organ (Gender, Work & Organization), 26 (2019) 2, S 124–139
Inhalt: In the era of global competition, academic institutions are increasingly being managed as efficient organizations where early career academics are the most vulnerable group in the academic hierarchy. We use gender budgeting to deconstruct the financial and managerial processes and procedures in a selected academic institution in Iceland. Drawing on multiple data collection methods, we argue that new managerialism enhances the precarious position of early career academics, especially women and those in the more feminized fields. Furthermore, we show that the system's bias in favour of so‐called hard science generates gendered consequences for early career academics. We demonstrate this structural gender bias in each of the first three stages of an academic career: PhD, postdoc and other temporary positions, and assistant professorship. By highlighting the gendered consequences of new managerialism, we want to direct attention to the need to include a gender perspective in the budgeting and all the decision‐making processes in academic institutions.
Let the right one in: A Bourdieusian analysis of gender inequality in universities’ senior management
Autor/in:
Gander, Michelle
Quelle: Gender Work Organ (Gender, Work & Organization), 26 (2019) 2, S 107–123
Inhalt: This article examines the lack of gender diversity in senior management positions in professional staff in universities. These results are analysed via a Bourdieusian analysis of economic, social, cultural and symbolic capital. Through a purposeful sample of senior professional staff working in universities in three countries: Australia, Canada and the UK, six career‐enhancing strategies needed for career success were determined. The article critiques the resource‐based view of career capital and argues that capitals accumulation for career success can be understood by considering the concepts of symbolic violence and habitus as a way of understanding intra‐cohort differences. It proposes that by considering both the subjective and objective cultural constructs via habitus, and by acknowledging the importance of symbolic capital and symbolic violence towards women, this may be one way of increasing female representation in senior management.