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
Foreign women in academia : Double‐strangers between productivity, marginalization and resistance
Autor/in:
Strauβ, Anke; Boncori, Ilaria
Quelle: Gender Work Organ (Gender, Work & Organization), 17 (2020) 2, 867 S
Inhalt: This article examines the professional experience of foreign women academics working across geographic boundaries in today's neoliberal academia characterized by liquidity. Framed within an intersectional perspective, we use the concept of the ‘double‐stranger' to examine data stemming from 20 in‐depth semi‐structured interviews conducted with scholars at different stages of their career in the social sciences. This article advances understandings of academic careers theoretically by identifying a temporal and hierarchical dynamic in the intersection of two categories of difference (gender and foreignness) that constitute a position of simultaneous belonging and non‐belonging for foreign women academics; and empirically through a qualitative investigation that explores three areas in which academic professional experiences are mobilized for double‐strangers: (i) transnational career moves; (ii) productivity and performance in today's neoliberal academia; and (iii) self‐induced estrangement as a form of resistance.
Academic motherhood during COVID‐19 : Navigating our dual roles as educators and mothers
Autor/in:
Guy, Batsheva; Arthur, Brittany
Quelle: Gender Work Organ (Gender, Work & Organization), 2 (2020) 1, 155 S
Inhalt: During the COVID‐19 crisis, being a working mother has taken on a whole new meaning, as mothers navigate working from home while juggling childcare, as well as coming to terms with their intersecting identities. The current article is a feminist, heartful autoethnographic account, couched in Relational‐Cultural Theory, surrounding our authentic experiences working from home and raising children during the worldwide pandemic. We explore academic motherhood, working from home, mental health, and coping during coronavirus and stay‐at‐home orders through engaged dialogue. We hope that showcasing our vulnerability can lead to change in the expectations we put on mothers in academia, while at the same time connect with readers who may be going through similar challenges.
Quelle: Gender Work Organ (Gender, Work & Organization), 26 (2019) 4, S 448–462
Inhalt: This article examines the rise in precarious academic employment in Ireland as an outcome of the higher education restructuring following OECD (Organisation for Economic Co‐operation and Development), government initiatives and post‐crisis austerity. Presenting the narratives of academic women at different career stages, we claim that a focus on care sheds new light on the debate on precarity. A more complete understanding of precarity should take account not only of the contractual security but also affective relational security in the lives of employees. The intersectionality of paid work and care work lives was a dominant theme in our interviews among academic women. In a globalized academic market, premised on the care‐free masculinized ideals of competitive performance, 24/7 work and geographical mobility, women who opt out of these norms, suffer labour‐led contractual precarity and are over‐represented in part‐time and fixed‐term positions. Women who comply with these organizational commands need to peripheralize their relational lives and experience care‐led affective precarity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
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.
Quelle: Gender Work Organ (Gender, Work & Organization), 26 (2019) 6, S 765–771
Inhalt: This special issue explores diverse forms of knowledge work that reconfigure and or reproduce gender relations and gender ideologies in organizations whose central mandate includes knowledge production. Knowledge about gender is produced by women's organizations, public bodies, corporations and international institutions as they engage in efforts to shape discourses, policies and practices on gender equality. We focus on the institutions whose special purpose is to produce knowledge in a usable form for others. These include universities and academic disciplines, but also new and old media, cultural and policy‐centred networks and profit‐making information managers.
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.