Page 145 - Through the gate of the neoliberal academy • Herschberg
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that women are more prone to teaching than to research. Later on, Maria’s ambition was questioned again:
Harriet: She would fit for both [research and teaching]. But I have doubts about her publications. She only has two in the pipeline. But those are together with [name of person in the field].
Michael: Her ambition for those papers, why did she not aim higher?
Harriet: I expect that is the highest possible achievement.
In this exchange, Harriet and Michael discuss Maria’s publications in the pipeline. Michael questions Maria’s level of ambition because, according to Michael, she did not submit her papers to top journals. Harriet believes that this is the best Maria can do. They leave unnoticed that Maria was early in her career (before PhD defence). Also, the committee members did not ask Maria why she chose to submit her work to certain journals. Instead, Michael and Harriet together disqualified both Maria’s ambition and quality. In the final evaluation, this was the main reason not to put Maria in the top ranking. The committee members might have drawn on the gender practice that women’s quality and ambition are evaluated lower than men’s, which is a common practice in organisations (Sools et al., 2007; Van den Brink & Benschop, 2014). Here, I show how this gender practice is practiced in an actual evaluation procedure, and how this can harm the assessment of a woman candidate.
In the SSH2 case, the publications of one of the men candidates, Henry, were assessed as “low quality”. The committee argued that he would need a “buddy” or “mentor” for both his research and teaching. Nevertheless, this did not affect the evaluation of Henry’s drive and ambition.
Bernard: He applied for a position in [city in the Netherlands] recently, I was told. I know him. He is very research driven, ambitious. He was in one of our seminars. He knows all literature. If we can’t find anybody, we should hire him.
Bernard, who knew Henry and had worked together with him, suggested hiring Henry if the committee could not “find anybody”. He praised Henry’s drive and ambition throughout the deliberations, which seemed to make up for the criteria that Henry did not fulfil. Also, the network connection of Bernard and Henry seemed to benefit Henry’s candidacy. In this same procedure, candidate Delia had indicated that she would publish a number of articles “in the next months”. At least one of those was sent or would be sent to a top journal, as argued in her application. In the
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