Page 80 - Through the gate of the neoliberal academy • Herschberg
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78 CHAPTER 4
In the competition for a scarce number of (precarious) academic positions, recruitment and selection practices determine who get access to such positions. This chapter adds to the literature on gender in academic organizations by showing which gender practices characterize the recruitment and selection of early-career researchers where judgements are based on potential. The findings are based on a critical comparative analysis of empirical material on recruitment and selection procedures and criteria collected in SSH and STEM departments in six European higher education institutions. We uncover gender practices in the recruitment and selection of early-career researchers throughout the six countries by showing how gatekeepers discursively construct recruitment and selection criteria. We illustrate how two general gender practices of welcoming women and assessing potential for excellence are conflated with multiple specific gender practices in the evaluation of early-career researchers. We argue that most of the gender practices add to the precariousness of women early-career researchers. Finally, we identify three discrepancies in the various criteria and their application.
4.1 Introduction
Despite efforts to reduce gender inequality in European academia, figures show that the number of women researchers is still disproportionally lower at every step of the academic career ladder than the number of men researchers (EU, 2016). Previous research on gender in academia has demonstrated that various practices in academia are causing this gender inequality, such as the masculine organisation of academia (Teelken & Deem, 2013), academic networking (Van den Brink & Benschop, 2014), a lack of role models and informal support systems for women (Bagilhole & Goode, 2001), the substantial allocation of academic housework to women (Heijstra, Steinthorsdóttir, & Einarsdóttir, 2017), and the way academic excellence is constructed (Van den Brink & Benschop, 2012b).
The studies that analysed how the perpetuation of gender disparities is imbued in the rhetoric of meritocracy have shown the crucial role played by recruitment and selection practices at full professor level (Van den Brink, 2010; Van den Brink & Benschop, 2012b; Van den Brink, Benschop, & Jansen, 2010). However, gender practices in the recruitment and selection have hitherto not been studied for the early stages of the academic career. We argue that it is important to fill this void as the specific characteristics of the early academic career stage, such as the growing number of precarious positions (Wöhrer, 2014) and the more equal gender balance among junior staff (EU, 2016), point at the relevance of examining gender practices






























































































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