Page 82 - Through the gate of the neoliberal academy • Herschberg

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PhDs than the academic labour market can accommodate (Cyranoski, Gilbert, Ledford, Nayar, & Yahia, 2011) as numbers of academic positions stagnate or decline (Fiske, 2011). As a result, permanent positions, job security and career prospects are increasingly rare in the neoliberal academy, and early-career researchers are faced with strong competition for scarce jobs (Morgan & Wood, 2017; Nikunen, 2014). An increase in temporary contracts throughout European universities is found (Wöhrer, 2014), for example fixed term contracts and hourly paid contracts (Bryson, 2004). The focus of this chapter is on non-tenured assistant professor positions.
The temporality of fixed term assistant professorships (sometimes on a tenure-track) generally involves the principle of ‘up or out’, which substantially prolongs the probationary period post-PhD and constitutes the risk of a negative evaluation (Schiewer & Jehle, 2014). Furthermore, such precarious academic positions are intended to form “a bridge to more secure employment, but universities across the world are growing the casual workforce to the point where the prospects of a stable academic career are becoming more and more remote” (Morgan & Wood, 2017, p. 86). The potential impact of precarious work can differ across individuals and societies (Campbell & Price, 2016), but also across academic systems (Le Feuvre, 2018), for example in terms of a degeneration of career structures (Bryson, 2004), lack of access to employment conditions and opportunities (Harney et al., 2014), and a declining desirability of academic positions (Huisman, De Weert, & Bartelse, 2002). Precariousness in academia also shows a gendered division, with more women employed on fixed term contracts than men and a higher likelihood of women to remain on such contracts (Bryson 2004). Yet, Bryson (2004) found that for both women and men it is difficult to make “the transition from researcher on [a fixed term contract] to a more secure post” (p. 198). In this chapter, we uncover which gender practices play a part in evaluating candidates’ potential for precarious positions with a prospect of a more permanent contract.
4.3 Recruitment, selection, and gender practices
Recruitment and selection practices determine who get access to assistant professor positions. Recruitment is the process concerned with attracting suitable candidates (Newell, 2005) and selection is the process of choosing one candidate out of the pool of candidates based on (predefined) criteria (Van den Brink, 2010) and based on the ‘fit’ between the individual and the job. Members of the dominant academic elite play a critical part in both the recruitment and selection of candidates. Previous studies