Page 106 - Through the gate of the neoliberal academy • Herschberg
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104 CHAPTER 4
A STEM committee member in the Netherlands also considers the required mobility of early-career researchers a reason for the small number of women in his field and links this to family circumstances:
Respondent: But I think that is the big problem. Yes, the whole system how you get such a job, right? You cannot plan it and say: Now you do a postdoc there. And then I will become full professor there. It is more of a random walk. You get a postdoc position there, then you get your second position in another country. And then finally you get a [permanent] job, but this is maybe in a third country, right? Or at least not in the same city. And if then both, men, women have a job, it is going to be very, very difficult of course. And if you go in such a random walk through the entire world, or at least Europe. And I think that is one of the reasons why we do not have so many women.
Interviewer: And how do you mean that? Because they can allow that randomness less?
Respondent: Yes. But I think there is no solution. We want candidates who have that international experience. It is expected that they do a postdoc here and there and then this random component is inherent. And yes, that is of course very hard to combine with a family. (NL, STEM, M)
The respondent calls the career system in academia “a random walk” that demands multiple moves across positions and countries. He thinks women are less able to deal with this “random” component because for women (and not men) mobility is “of course very hard to combine with a family”. This respondent puts the responsibility of meeting the international experience criterion on the (women) candidates, as he argues “there is no solution” for the (women) candidates who do not meet that criterion, as the requirement prescribes to do “a postdoc here and there”. He treats the criterion as a strict demand and does not acknowledge alternative ways of obtaining international experience, such as short research stays abroad or international collaborations. The respondent considers the system as the problem without being reflexive about his own position within this system as someone involved in the construction of selection criteria and thus as someone who can apply criteria less rigidly and strict.
Academic citizenship. A fourth and final specific gender practice connected to the general gender practice of assessing potential for excellence is the request for academic citizens. In the previous sections, we showed that an ideal candidate for assistant professor positions is constructed primarily as an excellent researcher




























































































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