Page 111 - Through the gate of the neoliberal academy • Herschberg

A third discrepancy we found is between the welcoming stances towards hiring more women academics and committee members’ ostensible unwillingness to change or look for alternative ways of defining selection criteria. Committee members generally construct selection criteria as if they are etched in stone. Such practices safeguard committee members from any responsibility. Even research participants in power positions argue that they could not change criteria, as they have to abide by the rules and regulations defined by either the faculty board or the university board. None of the research participants seem to want or to perceive themselves able to change the recruitment and selection criteria for assistant professor positions. Therefore, our study shows that selection criteria are socially constructed, subjective, and fluid, yet, committee members present the criteria as ‘common-sense’, taken for granted criteria in selection decisions (Van den Brink & Benschop, 2012b) without reflecting on their own role in the construction of these criteria. Furthermore, our findings reveal that committee members have no or limited awareness of the gendered construction of selection criteria and the consequences nor do they reflect on their gendered assumptions about the qualities of women candidates. Hardly anyone questioned or challenged the current academic system or the beliefs that an academic career requires long hours, devotion, confidence, and competition. Neither did committee members contemplate the responsibility of others beside women to deal with possible difficulties. They put the responsibility of solving gender inequalities on the individual woman researcher making women responsible for limited success in acquiring assistant professor positions. This adds to women researchers’ precariousness who, in the increased competition for jobs, are made responsible for fighting the stereotypical images that committee members hold. This logic fits the neoliberal postfeminist ideal, which epitomizes ‘self-responsibility’ for women’s own lives and careers (Rottenberg, 2014) “without questioning the underlying masculine and capitalist norms of that ideal” (Benschop & Verloo, 2016, p. 102).
We conclude that a few gender practices can be beneficial for women academics. However, these practices around welcoming women and the alleged collaborative qualities of female academic citizens, portray women as different from men, convey generic ideas of women, and reproduce feminine characteristics as innate or essential (Crompton & Lyonette, 2005). Therefore, we question whether these ‘beneficial’ practices are strong enough to drive change. We have seen that the detrimental practices around assessing potential and constructing an ideal, confident, committed, and international mobile early-career researcher are so ubiquitous that they predominantly affect evaluations in the competition for assistant professor positions. This can cause committee members to make biased selection decisions,
THE PERIL OF POTENTIAL 109
4