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168 CHAPTER 6
decision-making. As a result, practicing gender can be actively resisted, but when committee members in less powerful positions did this in my study the outcome was not affected. Committee members who hold the power can define situations as they see fit and practice gender with liminal awareness (Martin, 2003).
6.3 Practical recommendations
Recruitment and selection decisions have long-term consequences for individual careers, university departments (Bozionelos, 2005) and scientific knowledge development. Therefore, getting insight into the (re)production of inequalities might help higher education institutions to develop recruitment and selection practices that enhance positive consequences. The studies in my dissertation have received (inter) national media attention, which shows the practical importance of the topic. For an overview of the media representation see Appendix D.
This section provides practical recommendations for organisations and hiring committees in order to counter the (re)production of inequalities in recruitment and selection, particularly at the early stages of an (academic) career. I will discuss practical contributions for both the stage of postdoc researchers and assistant professors and various aspects of the hiring process.
Hiring policies for postdoc researchers
In my study on postdoc recruitment and selection I show that in multiple European universities, there is no hiring policy for postdoc researchers when these positions are financed by external research funding that principal investigators (PIs) receive. As a result, PIs often determine solely how they want to recruit a postdoc researcher and whom they want to hire. Interviewed PIs explained that they often have little time for hiring postdocs because projects have to start within a certain timeframe. This limited time frame for recruitment and selection can instigate closed hiring procedures and reliance on personal networks to find candidates. I argue that this can exclude talented ECRs that are not part of such networks. Therefore, I recommend that universities and research institutes that employ postdoc researchers, implement formal recruitment and selection policies for postdoc positions that require open recruitment of postdocs, as this can reduce inequality practices inherent in closed recruitment. More formalized recruitment and selection could also prescribe that PIs should form a hiring committee to ensure that PIs are not solely responsible for the hiring. However, we do know from the literature that the formalization of hiring




























































































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