Limits to meritocracy? Gender in academic recruitment and promotion processes

Abstract

According to the literature, women researchers are sometimes at a disadvantage in academic recruitment due to insufficient network ties and subtle gender biases among evaluators. But how exactly do highly formal recruitment procedures allow space for mobilizing informal, potentially gendered, network ties? Focusing on the preliminary stages of recruitment, this study covers an underexposed aspect of women's underrepresentation in academia. By combining recruitment statistics and interviews with department heads at a Danish university, it identifies a discrepancy between the institutionalized beliefs among managers in the meritocracy and the de facto functioning of the recruitment procedures. Of the vacancies for associate-and full professorships, 40% have one applicant, and 19% are announced under closed procedures with clear implications for gender stratification. The interviews reveal a myriad of factors explaining these patterns showing how department heads sometimes exploit decoupling processes to reduce external constraints on management function and ensure organizational certainty.

Selecting early-career researchers: the influence of discourses of internationalisation and excellence on formal and applied selection criteria in academia

“…This study shows how they need to be evaluated on their potential, rather than on track records of performance available for the assessment of senior researchers. This multi-level study contributes to the literature on academic staff evaluation (Lamont 2009;Musselin 2010;Nielsen 2016;Van den Brink and Benschop 2012) by showing that Committee Members do not operate in a vacuum and that their actions are inseparably linked to the meso-and macro-context. The present study uncovered the dynamic interaction between macro-discourses, formal organisational policies and the actual practice of Committee Members in staff evaluation.…”

“…Human Resource Management-oriented research has examined the HR practices facilitating the recruitment, selection and retention of academics and has recently centred on talent management (Davies and Davies 2010;Thunnissen et al 2013). Research in sociology and (critical) organisational studies have emphasised the social construction of evaluation criteria (Lamont 2009), group dynamics during the evaluation process (Van Arensbergen et al 2014) and the production of inequalities in the process and criteria (Nielsen 2016;Özbilgin 2009;Van den Brink and Benschop 2012;Lund 2015).…”

“…Scholars in this field perceive attraction and retention of talented personnel as a challenge for universities (Musselin 2010;Thunnissen et al 2013). They present a (critical) evaluation of scientific quality and individual merit that (re)produce inequalities, for example in pre-selection processes for academic positions (Nielsen 2016) and in the construction of academic excellence (Van den Brink and Benschop 2012). Although these studies have delivered valuable insights into the production of inequality in academic evaluation, emphasising the role of individual evaluators, they often neglect how these evaluators are influenced by macro-discourses in the context of the global, neoliberal university.…”

Scientific Performance Assessments Through a Gender Lens

“…The department heads typically make the fi nal appointment decision in correspondence with the faculty deans. Indeed, existing research on recruitment and selection practices at Aarhus University, documents that department heads play an important part in identifying potentially relevant candidates for research vacancies at the university prior to the actual recruitment process (Nielsen, 2016b). A closer look at the evaluative practices of this group of managers thus seems particularly informative for the purposes of this study.…”

Introduction to Special Issue on Gender and Leadership and a Future Research Agenda

“…Firstly, these women regarded universities as operating according to male-definitions of merit. Thus, they challenged assumptions that universities are gender neutral meritocracies [14][15][16].…”