Page 148 - Through the gate of the neoliberal academy • Herschberg

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CHAPTER 5
issue, we have a very strong female [researcher in the discipline] who is going to be out of a job in [month] and may leave the subject. Which you know- And she had a paper last year in [A+ journal]. I sit on quite a lot of these committees and I don’t see male candidates in that situation. I have never seen a male candidate in that situation. I’ve never seen a male candidate with a paper in [A+ journal], who is in danger of leaving [the discipline]. And that’s what we’re looking at in this female candidate. Now, I mean, it is not your job or the job of this committee to fix that problem, but it’s worth saying at least.
[The other committee members remain silent]
Anna points towards the inequality she detected when comparing candidate Laura to men candidates whom she had evaluated in previous committees. She argues that men with a resume like Laura’s, would not find themselves in such precarious position and in danger of being out of a job. Anna discovered how committee members might have practiced gender by not acknowledging Laura’s quality and evaluating her accordingly. Anna argues that men candidates who are of the same quality as Laura would have been hired on an academic position already. She pointed towards an unequal position of men and women in the academic system and the difficulty for highly qualified women to be evaluated on their merits instead of gendered assumptions. After Anna’s argumentation, all committee members remained silent. The opportunity to discuss (and remedy) the detected inequality was not taken up by the other committee members. Seemingly, they did not feel responsible for countering the practicing of gender in their procedure. What followed after the silence was a brief discussion on what the dean would think about hiring a “female candidate”.
A little later in the same STEM3 deliberation, Jessie illustrated another way gender was practiced in the evaluation of Laura. In the following excerpt, she refers to the whiteboard that reflected the scoring of pluses, zeros4 and minuses for the various candidates based on four criteria: teaching, the interview, research, and fit in the department.
I also think Laura is stronger than Kevin, even though it is not reflected by the plusses and zeros on the whiteboard.
When all candidates had been discussed, it turned out that Laura, who was considered one of the top candidates, had received the second lowest score of all (remaining) five candidates (the lowest score was given to the other woman candidate). In the excerpt, 4 A zero indicated a score that was not a plus and not a minus.