MG, & Çağlayan, H. (2017), 'Micro-political practices in higher education: a challenge to excellence as a rationalising myth? Critical Studies in Education dx.

This article is concerned with the source of men's invisible advantage in the male dominated disciplines of Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM). It is suggested that this advantage has been obscured by combining sponsorship and mentoring. The research asks: Are men or women most likely to be mentored? Is it possible to distinguish between mentoring and sponsorship? Is there gender variation in either or both of these depending on the sourcewhether from the academic supervisor, line manager or other senior academics. This qualitative study draws on interview data from 106 respondents (57 men and 48 women) at junior, middle and senior levels, in four universities: one each in Bulgaria, Denmark, Ireland and Turkey. It shows that both men and women received mentoring from their PhD supervisor, albeit with slightly different reported nuances. Men were more likely than women to receive sponsorship in that relationship. Both men and women received sponsorship from the Head of Department, whose wider responsibilities may have reduced homophily. Men were more likely than women to receive sponsorship and mentoring from senior men, with most women indicating a lack of access to such senior academics. By distinguishing between mentoring and sponsorship, this article contributes to our understanding of the way male dominance in STEM is perpetuated and suggests the source of men's invisible advantage in STEM.

Academic capitalism is an outcome of the interplay between neoliberalism, globalisation, markets and universities (Slaughter and Leslie, 1997; 2001). Universities have embraced the commercialisation of knowledge, technology transfer and research funding as well as introducing performance and audit practices (Slaughter and Rhoades, 2000; 2004). Academic capitalism has become internalised as a regulatory mechanism by academics who attempt to accumulate academic capital (Morley, 2014). Universities are traditionally gendered organisations, reflecting the societal gender order. Despite fears regarding the feminisation of the academy, Thornton (2013, p. 128) argues that the embrace of academic capitalism is contributing to its re-masculinisation and exercises an incidental gender effect. Practicing is the means by which the gender order is constituted at work (Martin 2003, p. 354). Three practices in which academics engage are examined as exemplars of the way academics increase their academic capital stock in Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths (STEM) faculties in four European universities, in Bulgaria, Denmark, Ireland and Turkey. These practices tend to be more achievable and likely to be engaged in by men, thus, career practices are the mechanism through which the gender effect of academic capitalism is achieved, academic capitalism perpetuated and the gender order maintained in STEM in academia (200 words).

Using Webb's (2008) concept of stealth power and a critical realist perspective, this article identifies leadership practices that obscure the centralisation of power, drawing on data from interviews with 25 academic decision-makers in formal leadership positions in HERIs in Ireland, Italy and Turkey. Its key contribution is the innovative operationalisation of stealth power and the inductive identification of four practices which obscure that centralised power i.e. rhetorical collegiality, agenda control, in-group loyalty and (at a deeper level) the invisibility of gendered power. The purpose of the article is emancipatory: by creating an awareness of these leadership practices, it challenges their persistence. (101 words)

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