Page 141 - Through the gate of the neoliberal academy • Herschberg

earlier in the discussion, when Lydia was evaluated, Jessie called Lydia “very self- confident” and she argued that this was too much and could hamper assessments from grant committees. Jeff even called Lydia’s performance in the interview “controversial”. This hiring committee thus demands of women candidates that they walk the fine line between too self-confident and too modest. They want to hire a woman who is not too masculine (“working a hundred hours a week”) and not too feminine (not “convincing face-to-face”). The committee evaluated the behaviour of Laura and Lydia as insufficient according to the narrow standard of desired behaviour of women and by doing so they brought up additional doubts about the appointment of women candidates.
This section has shown that committee members raise doubts about almost all candidates. The findings show how committee members practice gender by overcoming doubts about men candidates and not overcoming doubts, but creating additional doubts for women candidates. Doubts about women are amplified by creating additional criteria that they have to meet. We know from previous literature that women are held against higher standards than men (Thoraldsdottir, 2004; Van den Brink & Benschop, 2014; Wennerås & Wold, 1997), but here I show how this happens in practice and in interaction. Furthermore, when it comes to women candidates, they included a hypothetical grant committee in their decision making process. They anticipated their evaluation based on how grant committees would possibly evaluate the behaviour of women candidates; behaviour that is based on stereotypical expectations of women (and men). This additional (non-formal) criterion was not applied in the evaluation of men candidates.
Questioning truthfulness
The third way of practicing gender in the final decision-making was by questioning the truthfulness of women candidates. I found that in a number of cases where only one woman was interviewed – and the men committee members were in the majority – the honesty of some of the women candidates was seriously questioned. In the following example of SSH1, Steven questions if Dora rightfully indicated in her CV that she had applied for a research grant.
Steven: There’s something I don’t understand. Her PhD is from [year]. Did she apply for [a prestigious individual Dutch grant]? She has [number of] children, so it might be just possible.
Leo: She would never lie about such thing.
Steven: You don’t know. We could check the formal data.
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