Inhalt: Scientific excellence and equal opportunities have been on the agenda for more than a decade now, raising serious doubts on the functioning of meritocracy as the major principle of assigning merit within academia. Our discourse analytical study of twelve expert interviews shows how both discourses are interrelated, thereby creating different perspectives on meritocracy and universities as organizations. Our analysis reveals three major discursive « meetings » of the two concepts : While in a first « meeting », excellence and equal opportunities are seen as fundamentally contradicting concepts and meritocracy in universities remains taken for granted, in a second meeting, the notion of scientific excellence and especially the norm of the male ideal researcher is criticized and hence the relationship between excellence and equal opportunities is problematized. In a third meeting, excellence is seen as highly dependent on equal opportunities, turning around the so far hierarchical relationship between excellence and equal opportunities. There are three major differences in the consequences of each meeting. First, meritocracy is either debated or taken for granted. Second, the focus shifts from individual researchers to selection criteria and finally the strategic aspect of positioning universities in a competitive market. Furthermore, while the focus is on women in the first meeting and shifts to critiquing procedures in the second, institutional change is at the heart of the third meeting. Our analysis hence shows that there is a greater variety of interplays than often talked about that offer different and even new ways forward.
Schlagwörter:Diskursanalyse; Exzellenz; Gender; Gleichstellung; Gleichstellungspolitik; Gleichstellungsverständnis; Schweiz
CEWS Kategorie:Wissenschaft als Beruf, Gleichstellungspolitik
Dokumenttyp:Zeitschriftenaufsatz