Page 132 - Through the gate of the neoliberal academy • Herschberg

130 CHAPTER 5
the committee deliberation that she “was asked to join this committee” because the committee was “seriously looking for [adding] a female member [to] the staff.” Here, Jessie suggests that men committee members invited her because she is a woman and the related expectation that having a woman on a committee increases the chance of hiring women candidates.
The excerpts of William (SSH1) and Catherine (STEM1) show how policies aiming to include more woman researchers in hiring committees can create tensions. The examples show how some committee members in this study practice gender by emphasising the sex of women members and by reducing women to female bodies. William problematized this, by arguing against last minute inviting a woman in the committee just because she is a woman. Catherine indeed objected to being reduced to a gendered body instead of being invited for her disciplinary expertise. However, William overlooked that this last minute situation was caused by his own lack of knowledge of faculty policy, for which he did not take responsibility.
This section shows that inviting women to committees for their expertise is not yet a common practice in these departments. Instead, their sex is made relevant at moments when discussing, arranging or documenting committee compositions. Some women are aware of the practicing of gender with regard to their presence in hiring committees, yet they confirm the belief that their presence can contribute to the hiring of (more) women candidates. The affirmative action policy in the case departments is not sufficient for creating more gender-balanced hiring committees, as it is executed in various ways, and it creates situations in which the focus is on women’s sex instead of their contribution as expert members.
Practicing gender in decision-making
In the stage of the hiring procedure that I will analyse in this section, women and men candidates had passed the ‘quality bar’ and were considered eligible candidates for the position. I explore how gender is practiced in the final decision-making where committee members discuss the qualities of a small number of candidates in order to make a final ranking. In the final decision-making in all five procedures, a woman candidate was discussed as a possible number one candidate alongside with one or two men candidates. Yet, only in one case, a woman candidate was ranked the top candidate in the end. So this section looks at how committee members practice gender in the evaluation of candidates to get a better understanding why in most cases women lose the competition from men candidates.