This article is concerned with the macro-cultural ideal or institutional myth of excellence as defined and used in the evaluation of academic staff as part of an institutional logic. Such logics 'prescribe what constitutes legitimate behaviour and provide taken-for-granted conceptions of what goals are appropriate and what means are legitimate to achieve these goals ' (Pache and Santos Insead, 2013:973). In the case study university, this logic is reflected in the identification of ostensibly objective, gender neutral key performance indicators (KPIs) of excellence. Lamont (2009) suggests that evaluation is necessarily subjective. Drawing on 23 qualitative interviews with those involved in such evaluation, this article looks at variation in the definition of excellence and in the evaluative practices in decision making fora. It raises questions about the implications of this for gender inequality and for the myth of excellence and ultimately for the legitimacy of the organisation. (145 words).
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.
In the Irish context and internationally a good deal of attention has been paid to the performance of masculinity among school students. However with a small number of notable exceptions, relatively little attention has been paid to masculinities in academic organisations. Drawing on a qualitative study in one university, this article proposes a tentative typology of masculinities in such an organisation. This typology involves two axes: career commitment and relationship commitment (with respondents classified as strong or weak on each dimension). Four types of masculinities are identified: Type 1: Careerist masculinity: Strong career and weak relationship commitment; Type 2: Enterprising masculinity: Strong career and strong relationship commitment; Type 3: Pure scientific masculinity: Weak career and weak relationship commitment; Type 4: Family oriented breadwinning masculinity: Weak career and strong relationship commitment. The titles careerist masculinity and family oriented breadwinning masculinity reflect generic characteristics. The titles of the other two types reflect the data derived from this particular sample. Since one of the important contributions of this article is an understanding of masculinities in an academic organisation, labels Downloaded from O'Connor et al. 529 which relate to that context have been used. Although three of these types modify hegemonic careerist masculinity, they all reflect the persistence of an underlying system of male privileging in the changing landscape of higher education. This typology is seen as potentially having implications for theories and practices of motivation and management in academic organisations.
This article describes a typological framework with axes relating to career and (non-work) relationship commitment to show how a specific cohort of women enact femininity(ies) in the context of the institutionalised practices that define science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) as a masculine domain. Based on the accounts of 25 women in such disciplines in an Irish university, four types are identified: careerist femininity; individualised femininity; vocational femininity; and family-oriented femininity. All of these are constituted in relation to the meanings attached to the masculinist STEM career which performatively render women outsiders. The typology moves beyond the career/paid work and work/life dichotomies to encompass both the re-envisioning of career as vocation (Type 3) and the development of a highly individualised lifestyle orientation based on a high commitment to both (Type 2). It points to the variation, complexity and contradictions in how women do femininities in the academic STEM environment.
This article is concerned with the complex inequality experienced by mothers in employment, and applies ‘strong intersectionality’ to women's narratives about time to reveal the intersecting inequalities women experience and gendered organizational practices. Drawing on empirical research with 30 Irish ‘working mothers’, this article explores the way time is ordered and managed to create gendered inequalities for women at the intersection of maternity with paid work. By conceptualizing gender, maternity and class as simultaneous processes of identity practice, institutional practice and social practice, following Holvino, women's narratives reveal that organizations manage and order time to fit with notions of ‘ideal workers’, which perpetrate older hierarchies and gendered inequalities, and which create regimes of inequality for women at the intersection of maternity with paid work.
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