Page 105 - Through the gate of the neoliberal academy • Herschberg
P. 105

activity? Does it mean having been frequently abroad? Having taught abroad? Having published in foreign journals? Or does it mean staying at home but being part of international networks, and so on and so forth? (IT, STEM, M)
The quote reveals that “international activity” can encompass many endeavours and that the committee member does not know what can be interpreted as international activity and what does not count as such. Because various committee members have multiple interpretations of the criterion due to a lack of definition, they can apply it at their discretion.
Even though some committee members argued that the mobility criterion is difficult to meet for all early-career researchers, most research participants throughout the countries and disciplines in our study expect that women researchers have a harder time fulfilling the international mobility criterion because of family or motherhood responsibilities. Committee members’ assumptions about women’s decreased mobility can influence their evaluations of women candidates because they anticipate that women cannot fulfil the requirement. Therefore, they practice gender when applying the criterion of international mobility.
For example, Italian committee members argued that women researchers will have to renounce part of their mobility in order to care for their child(ren). Men, on the contrary, are never mentioned in relation to family and children, so research participants assume that they will continue with their work and career plans regardless of their family status. This is similar in the Slovenian SSH department where two women research participants noted that living abroad should not be required from young female researchers at the beginning of their career, when they may have small children. A respondent explains:
A woman has difficulty to go abroad with her family. Her husband is not ready enough to go with her; he will be ridiculed by the social environment. In Slovenia that is less acceptable, if we want to admit it or not. (SO, SSH, F)
The committee member argues that women with families experience difficulties going abroad, which she relates to the Slovenian “social environment”. She states that the environment will most likely not accept and even “ridicule” men going abroad with their partners. In the interview she continues speaking about the criterion of international work experience and wonders: “why don’t we think of some alternative?”. This implies that the criterion is fixed and that alternative ways of meeting the criterion are not used in the respondents’ work environment.
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