Inequalities and the Paradigm of Excellence in Academia

Fiona Jenkins is a Professor in the School of Philosophy at the Australian National University and the Convenor of the ANU Gender Institute in Canberra, Australia. Her work on the status of women in philosophy has developed into a wider concern about how excellence is measured in academia. She is the leader of the collaborative Australian Research Council Discovery project "Gendered Excellence in the Social Sciences". She is also an expert on the philosophy of Judith Butler. She is the co-editor of Women in Philosophy: What Needs to Change? (2013) and How Gender Can Transform the Social Sciences: Innovation and Impact (2020). Barbara Hoenig is a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Department of Sociology at the University of Graz, Austria. Her work focuses on the sociology of science and knowledge, history of sociology, social inequalities, and European integration. She is author of Europe's New Scientific Elite: Social Mechanisms of Science in the European Research Area (2017). Susanne Maria Weber is a Professor of social, political, and cultural conditions of education at the Department of Education of Philipps-Universität Marburg, Germany. Her research interests focus on discourse analytical, practice theoretical and creative research approaches on organising in academia, organisational networks, and social movements. She is co-editor together with Michael A. Peters of Organization and Newness: Discourses and Ecologies of Innovation in the Creative University (2019). Together with Julia Elven she recently edited the book Consultancy in Symbolic Orders (2022, German). Together with Andreas Schröer and Claudia Fahrenwald she edited the book Optimizing Organizations? – Organizational Education Perspectives (2022, German). Andrea Wolffram is a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Department of Sociology at the RWTH Aachen University, Germany. Her research interests include gender relations and careers in engineering and science, gender technology studies, gender and diversity policies in organisations, and organisational change. She is co-editor together with Ingrid Jungwirth of Highly Qualified Migrant Women – Participation in Work and Society (2017, German).

Introduction: Inequalities and the Paradigm of Excellence in Academia

Part I. "Inclusive Excellence": How are excellence and gender equality combined?

1. Are Equality and Excellence a Happy Marriage of Terms? How Gender Figures in the Business Case for Change

2. Implementing Gender Mainstreaming in a Discourse of Academic Excellence

3. What are the Real Attitudes of Professors Toward Gender Equality?

4. An Excellent Researcher?: Institutional Programmatics and Organisational Strategies in the Academic Field

Part II. Constructing Excellence: How does gender bias affect the evaluation of excellence?

5. Gendered Representations of Excellence in Science and Technology

6. Gender Bias in Peer Review Panels: – "The Elephant in the Room"

7. Gendered Excellence for Business Interests: A Critical Examination of the Construction of Centres of Excellence in the Estonian Research Policy Discourse

8. Excellence?: Gendered Micropolitics in an Irish and Spanish University Context

Part III. Reproducing Inequality: How does the discourse of ‘excellence’ impact women’s careers?

9. Scientific Careers and Mobility Patterns of Top Researchers of European Excellence

10. The Bargaining of Excellence: Who’s (Not) Appointed by Academics?

11. Gendered Excellence in Physics

12. Excellent and Care-less? Gendered Everyday Practices of Early Career Scholars in Germany and Austria

Is Excellence really so Excellent?: An Afterword