Although a large number of studies have explored the main causes of gender inequality in academia, less attention has been given to the processes underlying the failure of gender equality initiatives to enhance gender representation, especially at the professorial level. We offer a critical discourse analysis of recently promulgated gender policy documents of the five Flemish universities, and demonstrate that defensive institutional work is a fundamental process underlying resistance to gender equality in the academic profession. That is, powerful organizational actors resist gender change by (un)intentionally deploying a combination of discursive strategies that legitimate what we describe as non–time-bound gender equality initiatives: The expected outcomes are undetermined in time, and they delegitimate concrete, time-bound measures that define specific outcomes against well-defined deadlines. By explicitly bringing a temporal dimension into our analysis, we argue that defensive institutional work deflects questions regarding what ought to be achieved when, and contributes to the slow pace of gender change in academia.

Drawing upon research regarding the complexities of family reunification migration and the migration of highly skilled individuals, this article outlines the experiences in mobility of highly skilled female professionals in the information and communication technology (ICT) sector. In turn, the focus lies on the impact of mobility on family life and how the family influences decision‐making processes regarding transnational career trajectories. In migration studies, little attention has been given to family‐linked migration among the highly skilled. This anthropological research contributes to filling this gap as the experiences and coping strategies of Indian ICT professionals and their accompanying spouses will be studied from their point of view. This article presents narrative biographical data on Indian ICT professionals, their dependants, and dual‐career households, with or without children, who embarked on mobile career paths that led to Belgium. The data have been gathered through participant observation and in‐depth, semi‐structured interviews, and were analysed in terms of exclusion and inclusion in a globalized knowledge economy. By looking at the intersection of female biographies and expatriation, this case study demonstrates the family dynamics in mobility decisions and the multidirectional characteristics of careers offered by the global ICT sector.

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