Page 117 - Through the gate of the neoliberal academy • Herschberg
P. 117

and selection of academics have focused on senior academic positions such as associate or full professorships (e.g., Nielsen, 2016; Van den Brink & Benschop, 2012b). The aim of this study is to contribute to the literature on gender inequality in (academic) hiring by studying how committee members practice gender in hiring procedures for early-career positions through observational research.
In academic hiring, but also other academic evaluation procedures such as peer review in research panels, evaluators argue that the assessment of scientific quality plays the most prominent role (Herschberg et al., 2018b; Roumbanis, 2017), specifically the quality and quantity of research output (Sandström & Van den Besselaar, 2016). Contrary to candidates for professorships who have lengthy track records of their academic achievements, the assessment of scientific quality of early- career researchers (ECRs) seems more difficult, as their track records are limited (Herschberg et al., 2018b).
Multiple studies have shown that academic evaluation is a subjective endeavour that is conflated with gender practices (Herschberg et al., 2018a; Nielsen, 2016; Van den Brink & Benschop, 2012b; Rivera, 2017). These studies have opened up the concealment of subtle practices of inequality by showing that women are evaluated more strictly than men and that women’s qualifications are systematically undervalued in the competition for positions, regardless of their actual performance. Such inequality can be particularly harmful to women candidates who are deemed ‘above the bar’ (the threshold of perceived competence) in final hiring decisions as Rivera (2017) showed that they are less likely than equally qualified men to receive job offers. As a result, women academics have fewer chances to continue their academic career. This study contributes to the scarce knowledge on actual evaluation processes and the practicing of gender in academic hiring decisions.
Another essential attribute of academic hiring decisions is that they generally involve multiple decision makers. Following Van den Brink and Benschop (2012b, p. 509), I consent that hiring procedures “are not simply technical endeavours intended to measure the quality of academics; instead, they are political endeavours that involve negotiations between multiple actors”. This study contributes to previous research on practicing gender, as it examines through observations how and around what issues men and women practice gender collectively, which is distinct from individual practicing of gender (Martin, 2006). Observations are the key way to collect data on practices as it is through observations that one can study “what it is that people actually do in organizations” (Yanow, 2006) instead of what they say they do. Observations allows for grasping “the processual and interactive dimension of gendering in its two main aspects: saying and doing” (Bruni et al., 2005 as cited in
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