Page 87 - Through the gate of the neoliberal academy • Herschberg

Table 4.2 Overview of general gender practices and specific gender practices
General gender practices Welcoming women
Assessing potential for excellence
Research context
Specific gender practices
Women contribute to the working environment
Role models
Confidence
Commitment
International mobility
Academic citizenship
THE PERIL OF POTENTIAL 85
Even though the proportion of women academics in assistant professor positions is more than double the proportion of women on full professorships in the EU-28 countries, we already see a decrease in the proportion of women academic staff from postgraduate / post-PhD positions to assistant professor positions (EU, 2016). This decrease is also visible in the countries included in this study (see Table 4.3).
Table 4.3 Proportion of women academic staff by grade, 2013 (source: EU, 2016)
Country
Iceland (IS)
Slovenia (SO) Belgium (BE) Switzerland (CH) Italy (IT)
The Netherlands (NL)
Grade D -
52.6 48.3 41.5 50.3 45.6
Grade C 51.2 45.5 35.8 38.5 45.4 37.8
Note. Grade C represents assistant professors; Grade D represents either postgraduate students not yet holding a PhD degree who are engaged as researchers (on the payroll) or researchers working in posts that require a PhD.
A general tendency of Western governments has been to decrease the amount of public money spent on public services (De Boer et al., 2007) and the direct investments in higher education. All universities in our study have been confronted with decreasing budgets, except for the Swiss university. In Slovenia, budget cuts have been so severe that professors have to fund part of their own position by acquiring external funding. In all universities in our study there is an increasing pressure on academic staff to obtain external research funding. Particularly for postdocs this
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