Page 112 - Through the gate of the neoliberal academy • Herschberg

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attributing more potential to men researchers. As a result, women researchers can be excluded from the competition, which can lead them to be forced into longer periods of job insecurity and a lack of career prospects.
In conclusion, gender practices in the recruitment and selection at the early stage of academic careers show how tacit criteria are more decisive and that assessments of potential are particularly perilous for women. Overall, many committee members depict women as non-competitive, modest, non-committed, and non-mobile, which hampers women’s career development and impedes their escape from precariousness. Future research could examine how these generic ideas affect individual women applicants, by studying the literal practicing of gender on the spot, for example during selection committee deliberations.