we have taken as our brief and context the latest upsurge in incidents of a racist nature in certain higher education institutions in South

Purpose -The purpose of this paper is to provide insights into certain themes and discourses that have emerged from two research projects on gender and racial equality in higher education in Sweden and South Africa. Design/methodology/approach -Drawing on discourse analysis using a Foucauldian lens, and Universalism concepts premised on Robert Merton's scientific narratives, social texts are analysed to bring out diversity themes that shape individual research identities as positioned in South Africa and Sweden. Findings -The findings indicate that two common themes have emerged during the research process: marginalized discourses of ethnicity and ''race'' as these emerge in the appointment process; and institutional culture and language. Despite the obvious differences between the countries there appear to be similar discourses at work in the education policy documents such as ''gender equality'' and ''diversity''. The themes listed above appeared to be central for understanding how ''gender equality'' and ''diversity'' strategies operate through ethicised/racialized discourses in researchers' everyday academic lives in similar but not identical contexts.Research limitations/implications -To be able to determine if these findings can be abstracted to a more general level, further investigations on how gender and race/ethnicity operate in the everyday lives of researchers in different socio-cultural contexts will need to be conducted. Originality/value -The paper offers new insights into how global discourses on ''gender equality'' and ''diversity'' operate in similar but not identical academic contexts and how academics respond to them on the level of social interaction as well as on the level of institutional culture.

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In South Africa, 15 years into a new political order, higher education institutions are under pressure to create and sustain the conditions necessary for the consolidation of democracy. One of the more important of these conditions is the need to shift their academic staff profiles in ways that are more representative of a diverse democracy. This process is mediated by legislative and policy reforms that have as their aims the establishment of a more diverse community of academics (see, inter alia: White Paper, 1997; Employment Equity Act No. 55 of 1998; National Plan for Higher Education, 2001). While much current thinking is at the macro-level and focused on narrow human resource aspects related to "getting the numbers right," there is limited research on what happens in the daily experiences of faculty. This article draws on a research project conducted at five universities in South Africa in order to explore how academics in their everyday micropractices of governance, teaching, and research respond to this external systemic pressure. The findings are considered in terms of their implications for the democratization process, in relation to issues of governance, fairness, and trust, at the levels both of institutions and of society as a whole.

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