Negotiating meritocracy and gender equality across organisational spaces: the case of a tenure track system

Abstract

In this article, we study how meritocratic systems and gender equality concerns are negotiated across different organisational spaces in Higher Education Institutions (HEIs). Based on a case study of the organising of a tenure track system in a Swedish university, we suggest that the intersection of meritocratic processes and gender equality work can be analysed as a set of negotiated orders in these spaces. This fragmentation may imply problems for advancing gender equality agendas in relation to established notions of meritocracy but may also imply opportunities for change as existing organisational spaces can be reconstructed or new ones created. Our notions of fragmentation and negotiated orders thereby suggest that the current situation is both stable and legitimate and that re-negotiations need to involve reconstructions of the various spaces and not only interventions into them.