Inequalities and the Paradigm of Excellence in Academia

Book excerpt: This volume examines the criteria of excellence producing inequalities of gender in the daily working environment and evaluation of academics. Policy makers have increasingly placed emphasis on gender equality as part of a strategy for achieving research excellence, and efforts to reduce gender bias have become mainstream. This book suggests that this goal has remained elusive in practice due to continuing under-representation of women across many academic and scientific fields. Questioning the old structures of male-dominance still prevalent in national research policy, the book explores the effects of institutional values and practices on the careers of academics, particularly the academic identities of women and their career developments. It focuses on case-studies drawn from Europe while also highlighting the rise of new forms of public management and a neo-liberal framing of the value of academic work, that have a much broader global reach. Using participatory research, the book analyses contemporary forms of 'gendered excellence' in an intersectional and international perspective. It will be of interest to junior/senior researchers, teachers and scholars in Sociology, Education, Gender Studies, History, Political Science and Science and Technology Studies.