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ABSTRACT
Academic capitalism is an outcome of the interplay between neoliberalism, globalisation, markets and universities. Universities have embraced the commercialisation of knowledge, technology transfer and research funding as well as introducing performance and audit practices. Academic capitalism has become internalised as a regulatory mechanism by academics who attempt to accumulate academic capital. Universities are traditionally gendered organisations, reflecting the societal gender order. Despite fears regarding the feminisation of the academy, 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. 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.
Acknowledgement
This work was supported by the European Commission under Grant number 287526.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Additional information
Funding
Notes on contributors
Clare O’ Hagan
Clare O’Hagan: I am an academic and researcher based at the University of Limerick managing an EU gender equality project, addressing women’s under-representation in Science Technology Engineering and Maths disciplines. My area of focus is gender and employment, as well as having a keen interest in management and organisation behaviour. I am working as a Research Fellow on FESTA (FP7 EU Science-in-Society) project with seven EU partners and have just completed a monograph (Cork University Press) on the inequalities and privileges experienced at the intersection of maternity with paid work ‘Complex Inequality and “Working Mothers”’. Motivated and experienced researcher and lecturer in Sociology, Women’s Studies, Management and Human Resources. Awarded the prestigious Irish Research Council for the Humanities and Social Sciences (IRCHSS) Scholarship to pursue Ph.D research. Considerable teaching practice with demonstrated expertise in practice-led teaching-led research. Fifteen years management experience in Human Resources in manufacturing and service Fortune 500 organisations.
Irina Topuzova is a PhD student and also a part-time assistant professor in Psychology. She obtained her master degree in Legal Psychology in 2010. She teaches graduate courses in Psychology of Management, Organizational Psychology, and Legal Psychology. She is an expert of topics related to effective functioning of administration and the society at large within the European Social Fund Programs (Operational Programme Administrative Capacity 2007-2013) in Bulgaria (e.g. social status, roles and norms, motivation, communication styles). Her research work is devoted to the Motivation of the Teaching and Research Staff in the Academia. She participated in an Erasmus project aiming to develop an International Master Program in European Higher Education Management and Development. She is also involved in additional projects about motivational factors, organizational environment etc.
Pat O’Connor
Pat O’Connor: Prior to the mid-1990s, my research interests (unconsciously) excluded power. My work at that time focused particularly on social support, on women’s ties (friendships; mother/daughter and sister/sister relationships; marital pleasure), and culminated in a book on Friendships Between Women published by Harvester/Wheatsheaf in UK/Guilford in the United States. Since the mid-1990s, I have been concerned with organisational and institutional gendered power: in semi-state structures, in the academy, in the family and in the wider society. My fourth book Emerging Voices: Women in Contemporary Irish Society (1998/1999) reflects these interests. During three successive periods as Dean of the Faculty of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences, my research interests turned to children and young people, focusing particularly on gendered selves, and Irish Children and Teenagers in a Changing World (2008) reflects this focus. More recently an interest in power has reasserted itself and has been reflected in a cross-national study of senior management in higher education, including United Kingdom, Portugal, Sweden, Australia, New Zealand, Turkey and Ireland. This has culminated in a large number of publications, including a book on Management and Gender in Higher Education (2014) published by Manchester University Press. I am Principal Investigator in UL on a 5-year (2012–17)Framework seven cross-national project on Female Empowerment in Science in Academia (FESTA) including Sweden, Southern Denmark., Italy, Germany, Bulgaria and Ireland.
Eva Sophia Myers
Eva Sophia Myers: I am the head of the Dean’s Office and faculty administration at the faculty of Science. I have a background in goldsmithing, linguistics, psychology and organizational consulting. I have experience with issues ranging from communication, strategic planning, conflict mediation, leadership supervision and organizational consultation. My main professional interest is how to make diversity an embedded practice in a university setting – applying approaches such as large group intervention (e.g. Open Space and Future Search), group dynamics and narrative supervision and facilitation. FESTA is to my mind an important project because it strives to bridge theory and daily practice in an area that is of huge importance – and when and if we succeed in turning the tide in Academia in small and big measures, also potentially of great impact.
Liv Baisner
Liv Baisner: I have a master in Business, Language and Culture. I work as Task leader of FESTA and have experience as department leader and department director within Human Resource working with recruitment, administrative processes and management and leadership development. I have worked at the University of Southern Denmark since the beginning of 2010 at the central HR department and then as a Project Manager of an EU project at the Rectorate initiating scientific collaborations and research projects between academic institutions in the region of Southern Denmark and Schleswig-Holstein in Germany. Moreover, I am a member of the University’s Equality Board, where I have had the possibility to influence that several FESTA initiatives serve as pilot studies in SDUs overall university Equality Board Action Plan. I like being part of FESTA and I believe in the different tasks making things work on a practical level.
Georgi Apostolov
Georgi Apostolov is Associate Professor of Education and Science Management and teaches graduate and postgraduate courses in Education, Science and Technologies; Management of Organizational Culture, and Leadership. Prof. Apostolov was engaged in many international projects and initiatives in various fields of higher education management and development and formerly worked as a local consultant for the Helsinki Consulting Group for the project ‘Modernization of Higher Education in Bulgaria’. Presently, he is also Editor-in-Chief of ‘Philosophy’ – a scientific journal published by the Bulgarian Ministry of Education, Youth and Science.
Prof. Apostolov was Bulgarian coordinator for the FP6 ADVANCE project – Advanced Training for Women in Scientific Research (2006–2008). He took part in a number of events organised within other similar FP projects (e.g. EUMENT-NET promoted mentoring as an effective tool for promoting gender in academia and research).
Irina Topuzova
Irina Topuzova is a PhD student and also a part-time assistant professor in Psychology. She obtained her master degree in Legal Psychology in 2010. She teaches graduate courses in Psychology of Management, Organizational Psychology, and Legal Psychology. She is an expert of topics related to effective functioning of administration and the society at large within the European Social Fund Programs (Operational Programme Administrative Capacity 2007-2013) in Bulgaria (e.g. social status, roles and norms, motivation, communication styles). Her research work is devoted to the Motivation of the Teaching and Research Staff in the Academia. She participated in an Erasmus project aiming to develop an International Master Program in European Higher Education Management and Development. She is also involved in additional projects about motivational factors, organizational environment etc.
Gulsun Saglamer
Gülsün Sağlamer, former Rector of Istanbul Technical University (1996–2004) is a professor of architecture. She received her PhD from Istanbul Technical University and carried out her postdoctoral studies in Cambridge University at The Martin Centre (1975–1976). She was invited to Queen’s University of Belfast as a Visiting Professor (1993–1996) and as an external examiner (1999–2003). She has been a Board Member of EUA (European University Association) (2005–2009) and a member of the Research Policy Working Group of EUA since its establishment in 2005. She has been a Member of Board of Trustees of Kadir Has University between 2006 and 2014 and a Founding Board Member of Global Relations Forum (GRF) since 2009. She is a member of European Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters since 2011. She is the Chair of the EC Horizon2020 Marie Sklodowska-Curie Action Advisory Group (2013–). She was awarded Honoris Causa by Carleton University, Canada (2001), Universitatea de Nord Din Baia Mare University, Romania (2002) and Ovidius University of Constantza in Romania (2009). American Institute of Architects (AIA) awarded her “Honorary Fellowship (Hon FAIA) in 2006 and she has been also awarded “Leonardo da Vinci Medal” by SEFI (Société Européenne Pour la Formation Ingénieurs-European Society for Engineering Education) in 2005–2006. She is a member of the Editorial Board of Open House International, International Journal for Housing Science and Its Applications. Alongside her academic interest areas in research, she has also focused on higher education and research. She gave over 80 invited lectures on different aspects of higher education (such as research policy, doctoral education, innovation, quality assurance, quality enhancement, funding) at international meetings. She has established a center in Istanbul Technical University titled ‘Women Studies in Science Engineering and Technology’ in 2009 and was the chair for Executive Board of the centre (2009–2012). She organised biennial ‘European Women Rectors Conference’ at ITU in Istanbul since 2008. She is the President of the EWORA European Women Rectors Association since 2015. She has been leading the ITU Research team on Women in SET projects since 2006 that have been funded by EC and ITU (UNICAFE, SHEMERA, NETFA, FESTA, COST genderSTE).
Mine G. Tan
Mine G. Tan is a member of the gender equality committee of the national commission for UNESCO, Turkey. She worked as a professor of sociology of education and gender studies at Ankara University and held several administrative positions like the head of the Department of Women’s Studies and board member of the Women’s Studies Center of the same university. She was a founding and executive committee member in the Women’s Studies Center in Science, Engineering and Technology of Istanbul Technical University (2009–2012). She was also a visiting scholar at the University of Cambridge, England and Fulbright scholar at Washington State University, USA. She participated in international gender projects as She Euromediterranean Research Area (SHEMERA), Meta Analysis of Gender and Science Research (2008–2010), Survey of the Career of Female Scientists at Life Sciences versus Technical Universities (UNICAFE) (2006–2008), Education in ‘Multicultural’ Societies project of Goteborg University and Swedish Research Institute in İstanbul (2004–2007), Population and Development Strategies research commissioned by Turkish Academy of Sciences/UNFPA (2003–2004). She participated in such national projects as the Network of Female Academicians in Science Engineering and Technology in Turkey (NETFA), 2010–2012; Civil Initiative for the Education of Girls in Turkey (2006–2007), Turkish Women’s Thesaurus (2007–2008). She is a member of the ITU team in EU seventh framework project of Female Empowerment in Science and Technology Academia (FESTA).
Hülya Çağlayan
Hülya Çağlayan gained her undergraduate degree in Philosophy at Bilkent University in Ankara, Turkey in 2009. During her undergraduate studies, she attended International Summer School by European College of Liberal Arts (ECLA) in Berlin, Germany in 2007. She then completed her Masters in Cultural Studies at Sabanci University in Istanbul, in 2011. For her MA thesis, she carried out an ethnographic fieldwork for 6 months in one of the suburbs of Istanbul. Her work examined the effects of intersecting dynamics of class, gender and ethnicity for women workers living in the area. She received an honourable mention at ‘Dicle Kogacioglu Article Award 2011’ for her article based on her MA thesis. She also worked as a teaching assistant at Sabanci University between September 2009 and June 2012. Since August 2012 she has been working at Istanbul Technical University as a researcher for the project titled ‘Female Empowerment in Science and Technology Academia’ (FESTA) funded by EC under FP7 capacities. She has also participated in several other national and international projects addressing the topic ‘women in STEM’.