Page 100 - Through the gate of the neoliberal academy • Herschberg

98 CHAPTER 4
reproduced. The following quote illustrates this:
And I think that quite more often in this kind of procedures, where women who are made insecure appear as candidates in front of a committee that consists of just or mainly men, it can go wrong. [...] One of those full professors in that committee, [...] he really lives in the fifties constructions. He comes home and the dinner is served and he does not do anything, so he can totally focus on his career. So he thinks that if you for example work part time in the end you cannot meet the written and unwritten criteria to make a career, so become an associate or full professor. And if you are confronted with such a statement, on request or not, during a job interview or a performance appraisal – what happened to me once during a conversation with him – then you think: should I just quit now, so to speak, because I do not have such a situation at home. At home we divide things or try to do that as fair as possible, so I won’t be [working] 70, 80 hours, that is just not possible. So at the moment that, yes, that kind of professors with fossil ideas still take part in committees, that kind of messages are still being conveyed. (NL, SSH, F)
This committee member illustrates how selection procedures with all men committees “can go wrong”. She argues that senior men (committee members) can make women insecure about a future career in academia because of their opinions on the impossibility of combining a career in academia with “other aspirations”. The respondent explains how her boss expressed his opinion that a career in academia infers (more than) full time commitment to the career. Through the respondent, the boss reinforces the prevailing notion of an excellent academic career as a profession that entails working 70 to 80 hours per week. The respondent explains that women who cannot fulfil these “unwritten criteria” because of other obligations outside work can become insecure because of these expectations and discouraged to pursue an academic career. She argues that having men on selection committees who hold these “fossil ideas” (i.e., old fashioned ideas) can be problematic for women candidates.
A related reason given by research participants for women’s perceived lack of commitment has to do with motherhood and care responsibilities. Many committee members expect an excellent researcher to be fulltime available, devoted to the job, and to put in long hours of work. When research participants throughout all countries talk about recruitment and selection of assistant professors, they ascribe difficulties to women early-career researchers to meet these expectations, as they equal women with mothers. Most committee members seem to be convinced firstly of the given that all women are (future) mothers, and secondly of the incompatibility