Gender practices in the construction of academic excellence: Sheep with five legs

Abstract

Academic excellence is allegedly a universal and gender neutral standard of merit. This article examines exactly what is constructed as academic excellence at the micro-level, how evaluators operationalize this construct in the criteria they apply in academic evaluation, and how gender inequalities are imbued in the construction and evaluation of excellence. We challenge the view that the academic world is governed by the normative principle of meritocracy in its allocation of rewards and resources. Based on an empirical study of professorial appointments in the Netherlands, we argue that academic excellence is an evasive social construct that is inherently gendered. We show how gender is practiced in the evaluation of professorial candidates, resulting in disadvantages for women and privileges for men that accumulate to produce substantial inequalities in the construction of excellence.

Keywords

construction of excellence gender practices inequality meritocracy recruitment and selection women in academia

Almost a decade ago, Scully (2002) called upon critical management scholars to address errors existing within meritocratic systems in universities, as faith in the meritocracy is in the heart of how inequality is reproduced. Scully argued that we should start scrutinizing our own institutions and considering how unquestioned assumptions (e.g. ‘The university is a meritocracy’) support and reproduce inequalities (p. 400). This would require a critical examination of who gets ahead and who is rewarded in universities, who holds power, and who is included. Current academic evaluation systems, however, have firmly anchored the norm of meritocracy within the global academic system by emphasizing the objectivity and measurement of excellence. Critics have noted how excellence has become the ‘holy grail’ within the emerging culture of ‘managerialism’ in academia (Borum and Hansen, 2000; Deem, 2009), thereby increasing the pressure on university organizations to focus on quality assurance and performance indicators (Anderson and Shirako, 2008; Barry et al., 2006; Parker and Jary, 1995). Excellence is discussed primarily in terms of productivity, peer review, citation indexes, internationally refereed publications, and membership of editorial boards (Basu, 2006; van Raan, 2005). These allegedly neutral and objective indicators of excellence are invested with considerable symbolic and material power, and they are often seen as unproblematic and self-explanatory.

In line with Scully, several scholars have commented on the claim of objectivity, showing that merit-based systems of academic evaluation are producing multiple inequalities (Hearn, 2004; Knights and Richards, 2003; Krefting, 2003). It has been argued that the dominant journal-ranking system undermines the purpose of social scientific research by relying solely on articles in a limited number of elite journals, which count only when written in English (Adler and Harzing, 2009; Descarries, 2003). According to these critics, the system also undervalues interdisciplinary research (Adler and Harzing, 2009; Jain and Golosinski, 2009) and research on cases that do not involve the UK or the US (Meriläinen et al., 2008; Nkomo, 2009). It has also been claimed that these systems produce or reproduce hegemonic structures of inequality based on gender, race, and class (Castilla, 2008; Dovidio and Gaertner, 2000; Özbilgin, 2009). Understanding the ways in which constructions of excellence are connected to the reproduction of inequalities in the academic system requires theoretical and empirical work that considers the way in which excellence is constructed and evaluated in day-to-day reality.

To further our understanding of inequalities in academic practices, we focus on a process in which excellence is constructed on the spot: the recruitment and selection of full professors. At present, we know too little about how the construction of academic excellence translates into the set of requirements for new professors. The observations of Eustace from two decades ago are still applicable today: ‘there is rhetoric about criteria, but little about those that are actually applied’ (Eustace, 1988: 69). The aim of this article is to unpack the definition of academic excellence at the micro level, its operationalization by various constituencies according to the criteria they use in academic evaluation, and the ways in which gender inequalities are imbued in the construction and evaluation of excellence. This is important, as the selection of new professors has far-reaching consequences for the selection of research lines to be developed and the relative prioritization of research and teaching. Furthermore, the selection of new professors has also implications for staff and students. The current underrepresentation of female professors means that there are not enough formal and informal female role models. Also, taking issue with the reproduction of gender inequality in selection practices for full professors is arguably an element of critical management scholars practicing what they preach in their own institutions. We highlight the interplay between the ‘ideal’ ethos of science and the actual practice of evaluating professorial candidates, drawing on empirical material constructed in a research project on processes involving the recruitment and selection of full professors in Dutch academia. As these processes usually occur behind closed doors, this study provides a unique glimpse of otherwise secretive and confidential practices.

In the context of professorial recruitment and selection, inequalities related to gender are among the most explicit. Gender is always intertwined with other social inequalities, including ethnicity and class (Acker, 2006; Holvino and Kamp, 2009), as illustrated by the association of ‘professor’ in the Netherlands with White men from the upper or middle classes. The focus of this article is on gender inequalities, as gender is a fundamental organizing principle that has immense consequences for the way that workplaces and life outside the workplace are organized and experienced (Wharton, 2005). It is particularly useful for explaining the emergence of inequality. Insights developed about gender inequalities may be relevant to other inequalities as well (Verloo, 2005).

The construction of academic excellence

The standard of excellence serves as a benchmark for academic evaluation and promotion. Excellence appears to be synonymous with the highest achievement on the scale of academic quality, or the highest level of academic performance (Deem, 2009; Lamont, 2009). The standards of excellence are based on Western norms of meritocracy, which refer to a social system that sorts people into positions and distributes rewards solely according to individual performance or talent (Scully, 1997). Academics must be judged on merit alone, and social categories (e.g. gender, race and class) should not matter (Merton, 1973). In a meritocracy, the label of excellence should be reserved for scholars of the greatest merit. Bourdieu (1976) was one of the first to dismantle this claim to objectivity and impartiality as one of the most persistent myths of contemporary academia: its function is to mask the specific interests of powerful academics and communities. Bourdieu (1988) argues that the university is a site of struggles for status, control and valued forms of capital. In addition to the distribution of capital, this struggle involves the way in which capital is defined and which forms of capital are valued. Bourdieu further argues that criteria for evaluating work cannot be entirely articulated; there is always an implicit, tacit dimension. Consistent with Bourdieu’s critique, we contend that academic evaluations are not simply technical endeavours intended to measure the quality of academics; instead, they are political endeavours that involve negotiations between multiple actors.

The myth of meritocratic impartiality implies that gender is irrelevant in recruitment and in evaluations for academic positions and grants. In their groundbreaking Nature article on sexism and nepotism in the peer review of research-grant applications to Sweden’s Medical Research Council, Wennerås and Wold (1997) show that the peer review system was not as ‘neutral’ as it had claimed to be. The article concludes that, while the academic quality of the proposal was an important factor in assessing the applicants for research grants, gender and affiliation with one of the members of the evaluation committee played important roles as well. Other research on gendered outcomes in academic promotion has shown a preference for men candidates over women candidates for promotion, even when assessors are aware that the applicants are equally qualified for the job (Bornmann et al., 2007; Cole et al., 2004; Foschi, 1996, 2000; Paludi and Bauer, 1983; Steinpreis et al., 1999). Social psychological research seeks to explain these gender differences and points to unintended stereotyping in academic evaluation and promotion (Banaji and Greenwald, 1995; Greenwald and Banaji, 1995; Greenwald et al., 2002). Studies on status and gender indicate the existence of gender status beliefs that entail gender stereotypes, in which men are considered more competent and therefore more worthy of status than are women (Correl, 2004; Ridgeway, 2001).

This line of research explains the undervaluation of women in terms of the gender bias of evaluators. It assumes that this bias can be corrected or eliminated, resulting in a fair, objective, and meritocratic system. In contrast, we argue that academic excellence cannot be treated as an objective and measurable attribute, but that it is a social construction that is always embedded within a social context and is thus subject to multiple cultural and political influences. Merit is not the only factor that determines whose articles will be published; the impact of status of the institute, theoretical orientation, reputation, and the networks of journal editors and reviewers may also play a role (Hojat et al., 2003; Lawrence, 2003). Publications must be read, discussed, and cited; a wide range of network contacts can help authors to disseminate their work (Johnson and Oppenheim, 2007; Mählck and Persson, 2000). Blind peer review and the system of journal rankings that should warrant the quality of academic work have been contested, in some cases because they are part of hegemonic structures of inequality in academia that favour White, middle-class men (Özbilgin, 2009).

In this article, we contribute to the work that considers excellence as a social construction by critically examining the construction and evaluation of academic excellence in the appointment of full professors from a gender perspective. We focus on the situational construction of evaluation criteria and the ways in which they are applied in the evaluation of professorial candidates. We examine how power relations may lead to idiosyncratic appointment decisions. Beyond structural factors that stymie women’s achievement of top positions in universities, we study gendered social practices—the everyday ‘doings’ and ‘sayings’ of gender—that underpin and reinforce subtle patterns of systematic disadvantages (Eveline and Booth, 2004; Martin, 2003).

Theory of gender practices

Our theoretical framework is informed by ‘social construction feminism’ (Lorber, 2005), which considers the structure of the gendered social order as a whole, along with the processes that construct and maintain it (p. 242). It is based on a theory of gender that sees both organizations and gender as social practices, connecting face-to-face interaction with institutional structures and cultural symbols (Acker, 1990; Martin, 2006; Poggio, 2006). We invoke the notion of gender practices to refer to the complex, multi-layered, everyday social practices of distinguishing between men and women (or between masculinity and femininity), which involve both formal and informal power processes. This notion can improve our understanding of how gender is constantly redefined and negotiated in everyday practices and interaction, of how men and women ‘do’ gender, and of how men and women contribute to the construction of gendered identities (Barry et al., 2006; Benschop, 2009; Gherardi, 1994; Katila and Merilainen, 2002; Poggio, 2006; Van den Brink and Stobbe, 2009; West and Zimmerman, 1987). Our particular interest lies in unpacking what is taken for granted and illuminating the ways in which broader social processes of power and ideology are deeply embedded in what we take to be ‘common sense’ (Dick and Nadin, 2006). Years ago, Acker (1992) emphasized the necessity of dismantling the perception of the ideal worker as a White, able-bodied, 40-year-old, heterosexual man whose patterns of achievement and legitimacy implicitly serve as the norm (Hoobler, 2005). Those who do not fit this profile are channeled into the position of the Other (Prasad and Prasad, 2002). Although sometimes constructed as capable of bringing additional value to an organization, the position of the Other is often constructed as deficient or as inferior to the ideal model (Zanoni and Janssens, 2004). This framework allows us to focus on gender practices in the construction and evaluation of academic excellence in the appointment of full professors.

The research context

This article draws on empirical data on professorial recruitment and selection practices in the Netherlands (Van den Brink, 2010; Van den Brink and Brouns, 2006). This context provides a unique case in which to unravel the standards of excellence that are applied in the evaluation of men and women candidates. These appointment practices were a mixture of internal promotions (44%) and external recruitment (56%) (Van den Brink and Brouns, 2006). The Dutch material is relevant to evaluation processes in a globalized academic world, as internationalization and the new managerialism have resulted in the convergence of global academic working practices and organizational characteristics (Clark, 1987; Slaughter and Leslie, 1997). The contemporary discourse on excellence and the emphasis on bibliometrics in assessing academic work are widespread among universities in many countries (Nkomo, 2009; van Raan, 2005), although the local context continues to have an impact on globalized working practices. It is likely that international scholars will be confronted with Dutch recruitment and selection practices now that the international mobility of the academic workforce increases. For this reason, and in line with Calás and Smircich (2006), who argue that societal particularities and transnational processes must be considered in studies of gender and organization, we provide a brief description of these context factors.

International benchmarks repeatedly show that the Netherlands trails the rest of Europe with regard to the percentage of women professors (12%), even though women students outnumber and outperform men students in the Netherlands (EU, 2009). The Dutch academic career system differs slightly from the Anglo-American system. Traditionally, upward career trajectories leading to the highest academic position in the Dutch system (i.e. full professor) depend not only on the personal merits of individual academics, but also on the positions that are available. Each step requires a vacant position and a recruitment and selection process. Only occasional personal chairs can provide individually qualified academics the opportunity to attain a temporary professorial position in the absence of formal vacancies. Professors holding such personal chairs are appointed for five years with the prospect of a permanent contract in case of a positive evaluation. In the Netherlands, the university sector consists of 13 public universities. Despite the tendency of universities to stress their distinctive features, there are no significant differences in terms of academic standards (De Weert, 2001). All Dutch universities were invited to participate in this study. Due to privacy issues and the scarcity of time on the part of auxiliary personnel, however, only seven out of the 13 universities actually participated. These seven universities represent a cross-section of all Dutch universities, including one of the largest institutions, and one university of technology.

Data collection

The most suitable method for examining gender practices is observation: actually seeing and recording what people say and do in recruitment practices (Martin, 2006; Yanow, 2006). In our study, however, direct observation was not possible. Although repeatedly requested, access to selection interviews was never granted, due to privacy considerations. We therefore focus on how interviewees reflected on those practices in writing (documents) and in speaking (interviews). The study is based on two complementary data sources: 971 appointment reports and interviews with 64 committee members.

Appointment reports provide details about the proceedings of the selection process and the argumentation for the nominated candidates, and they are submitted to the university board for approval. These reports contain the following information: the basic profile, the vacancy announcement, the list of applicants, recommendations from related faculties, the composition of the committee, and the final recommendations of one or two nominees to the dean. We compared the criteria mentioned in the job description to the criteria reported during the final nomination phase. The analysis further focuses on the criteria that were deemed ‘decisive’ in distinguishing between the candidates who were nominated and those who were rejected.

Following the analysis of the appointment reports, the first author interviewed 24 women and 40 men professors who had served in the function of committee member. In these open, in-depth interviews, informants were asked to describe the recruitment process and to highlight the arguments that they had used to explain their choices for the candidates who had been nominated. The informants were also asked about the competences and qualities that are required of a professor. In an attempt to capture the process in as much detail as possible, we encouraged the interviewees to talk about specific critical incidents and experiences, rather than limiting their discussions to generalities. In addition, fictitious résumés of professorial applicants were used to gauge how committee members assessed professorial candidates and how they prioritized the various criteria.

For the analysis, we used the computer software program Atlas-ti to systemize, code, compare and explore our data, as this method of mapping is appropriate for interpreting large numbers of interviews. We started by scanning the text and underlining essential words and phrases related to the topics of ‘criteria’, ‘job profile’, ‘ideal academic’, ‘selection between candidates’. By assigning open codes to various sections in the text, the initial descriptive coding provided insight into the common patterns and themes of these research areas. A regrouping of the initial codes revealed that the informants defined excellence in terms of professional qualifications, individual characteristics (ascribed or attained), and network contacts.

As researchers working in academia, we face a number of key ethical questions when conducting fieldwork and analysing data. Rather than providing a description of an ‘objective reality’, we consider our data as socially constructed in relation to the interviewees (Calás and Smircich, 2009; Essers, 2009). The collection and interpretation of the data are therefore influenced by the positions and biographies of both the researchers and the participants. As feminist researchers, we run the risk of over-sensitivity to gender when analysing and interpreting data (Alvesson and Billing, 2009). Our elaborate training in identifying gender inequality makes us vulnerable to reading more inequality in the data than may actually exist. To prevent this, we intentionally searched for deviant cases and alternative interpretations throughout all phases of the research.

Excellence and gender in practice

Most interviewees were not able to provide any clear description of ‘excellence’, instead referring to the common expression that, in academia, ‘you recognize excellence when you see it’. When asked what constitutes excellence, the majority of interviewees turned to the official criteria, characterizing an excellent academic as follows: extremely successful researchers with outstanding reputations; an inspiring and innovative teacher; a strong but facilitating manager with substantive administrative experience and a sympathetic personality with an extensive and varied international network of high-status contacts who fits into the faculty, is ambitious and willing to work in excess of full-time hours, and who is successful in gaining research funding. This description suggests that, in order to be considered excellent, a candidate must excel in all formal criteria listed in the job profile, as well as in an additional set of informal criteria. In many cases, the interviewees mentioned that full professors should be ‘sheep with five legs’: a Dutch idiomatic expression referring to someone with the ideal (and impossible to find) combination of skills and experiences. This concept was articulated by many interviewees in different ways: ‘jack-of-all-trades’, ‘mix of qualities’, ‘brilliant in all ways’ or ‘having it all’, but most frequently in terms of a ‘sheep with five legs’ or ‘excellent in all respects’.

The status of excellence is by definition a scarce good, however, and it would seem to stretch the bounds of credulity to assume that all appointed professors are actually ‘sheep with five legs’. The analysis of the 971 appointment reports reveals that only a few of the appointed professors ‘had it all’, while the vast majority did not. This is demonstrated by the numerous comments in the appointment reports addressing the deficiencies of nominated candidates. The following are examples: ‘strong research portfolio but should work on management skills’, ‘position as reward for services rendered’, ‘failure in the classroom, but excellent researcher’.

It is important to acknowledge that the standard of ‘excellence’ is often difficult, or even impossible, to achieve. In many appointment procedures, there is no time to search for that elusive candidate who excels in all the required areas. Committee members are compelled to use a strategy of satisficing (Grandori, 1984) by appointing professors who are excellent in one of the chosen areas, or who meet the basic standards adequately rather than with distinction. The practice of appointing professors whose credentials are not evaluated as ‘excellent’ in all areas is not problematic in itself. The findings suggest that most candidates are not actually appointed because of their excellence, but because of their suitability. Academic excellence can be defined only within the specific context of the discipline and within the boundaries of the objectives of the institution or department in question (Lamont, 2009; Musselin, 2002). Developments in the discipline or sub-field, the scarcity of candidates, the type of chair, the current composition of the staff, the atmosphere and cooperation in the group, the ambitions of the board or the student population may make it necessary to attract either a renowned researcher, an experienced manager or a teaching professor. This provides further evidence that the concept of excellence is a social construction, rather than an objective, static, measurable criterion.

The ideological and rhetorical power of ‘excellence’ nevertheless prevails in the accounts of the interviewees, especially with regard to women candidates. Many of the appointment reports and committee interviews mentioned that women tend to lose when competing with men because they are perceived as less equipped or because they are not labelled as excellent in all areas. The next section presents evidence of gender practices in the evaluation of men and women candidates by analysing the various forms of qualifications and the criteria used during the appointment phase.

Professional qualifications as a starting point

Committee members emphasized the decisive role of professional qualifications that are formally stated in the job profiles in the assessment of candidates. These official criteria largely involve such features as quality of research and teaching, success in obtaining research funding and experience in management and administration. The primary focus, however, is on the quality and quantity of research output. The majority of committee members voiced the opinion that criteria for assessing candidates’ research qualities are universal and gender-neutral, in the sense that both men and women must meet the same standards and that these standards are relatively easy to measure. Despite the apparent gender-neutrality of this bibliometric system, however, it can also blind committee members to the production or reproduction of possible inequalities.

First, candidates must meet the formal standard set by the research institute, department, or committee, and career interruptions are often not considered when evaluating research output. This places academics with career interruptions at a considerable disadvantage.

We have only one criterion: the list of publications. If women want to work part-time, that’s fine. But when you apply for a position here and you have half of the number of publications you should have had, the committee will never invite you for an interview. (Social sciences; man)

For this committee member, the number of publications was a key factor in defining the quality of research. The respondent also related this directly to women working part-time, without being prompted by the interviewer. Such views can disqualify academics who have not followed the regular—’masculine’—career path. In a climate in which each publication counts, women (and men) who have worked part-time during their careers will easily lose out. Although this applies to both men and women, our results reflect the adverse affects more prominently for women candidates. Recent research in the Netherlands shows that women academics are more likely than men are to hold fixed-term contracts and that women are over-represented as lecturers (van Engen et al., 2008).

Second, academics with career interruptions who do meet the required standards are often older, thus losing out anyway, as appointment committees often prefer younger candidates with equivalent qualifications. Some interviewees argued that women often do meet the criteria regarding the number of publications, but are generally older before they reach the same number of publications on their résumé.

After a certain point, it is too late for promotion. Then they [women applicants] have done everything that is required and they are qualified for the job, but they simply aren’t the right candidate any more, they are too old. There is a certain window during which you have to enter the circuit. In medical sciences, you have to become a professor between 40 and 50. Women are not that fast—that is where they fall short. They cannot do it that quickly. (Medical sciences; woman)

In this case, the social inequalities of gender and age intersect. There seems to be an often unspoken age range in which professors should be appointed, and the system favours academics that have followed a traditional masculine career path. Palomba (2004) shows that, in Italy, the most productive period in terms of publication occurs earlier in the careers of men than it does in the careers of women. The study finds that the most productive publishing period for women occurs between the ages of 45 and 49, and that it is less likely to occur before the age of 35. For men, the most productive period occurs between the ages of 35 and 39, and it is less likely to occur between the ages of 40 and 44. These findings suggest that women may overcome the first hurdle (i.e. a lack of publications), only to lose out due to age discrimination.

Third, the emphasis on research and the quantity of publications in international peer-reviewed journals may lead to the under-valuation of other formal academic skills, including teaching, management and professional activities. Because teaching and professional activities are usually under-valued, the heavier teaching loads associated with temporary contracts and lower-level positions constitute one source of gender inequality. Some of the interviewees confirmed that women and academics on fixed-term contracts expend significantly more attention and substantial energy on their teaching duties.

Women are more loyal, I think. They do not shrug it off too lightly; they put a lot of time and effort into the teaching part. I know a lot of men who have been giving the same lecture for the past 20 years. (Medical sciences; man)

According to this committee member, women academics devote more time to teaching than their male counterparts do, thus implying that men academics have more time to spend on research, management or both. Good teaching evaluations do not compensate for a shortage of research output. Because research productivity throughout the course of an academic career is paramount for appointments, the cumulative effect of prioritizing teaching over research could generate a significant difference between the genders in terms of promotion. Women’s dedication to teaching could thus become a handicap in attaining the status of excellence required for a professorship.

Fourth, social networks also play a role in the advancement of professional qualifications, as merit is not the only factor that determines research output. As illustrated in the following quotation, academics consider network contacts important for disseminating their own work.

Publication strategy can be seen as a game. You know, when you go to conferences and people know you personally, they tend to cite you more easily. You are in the picture. (STEM fields; man)

International publications and high citation scores may thus provide an indication of the quality of research or the by-product of participation in larger networks. Association with those who make decisions regarding publication and research funding may logically affect the likelihood that academics will have their work published. An extensive network can also generate more possibilities for co-authoring articles. Social-network connections can function as an accelerator: publications can lead to a better position at the university, and this higher position subsequently leads to a greater number of network contacts, more prestige, more funding, all of which can result in more publications. Professional qualifications are decisive primarily in the process of shortlisting candidates for interviews; during selection interviews, the committee members’ perceptions of the individual qualities of candidates become more important.

The tacit dimension: Individual qualities

Individual qualities are not formalized in job profiles; they appear to function as common-sense criteria in nomination decisions. Committee members consider physical appearance, self-presentation and perceived personality and leadership potential as valid criteria that can overrule other, more formally specified criteria. Our analysis reveals that the assessment of individual qualities is gendered and that it can be manifested in two ways: as a qualifier (e.g. being likeable) or as disqualifier (e.g. being too nice).

According to our findings, a candidate’s likeability is one element that influences the opinions of committee members regarding excellence. Interviewees noted that likeability increases when committee members identify strongly with a candidate. A common claim, especially among women academics, is that men full professors identify more strongly with younger men. Older professors tend to ‘recognize themselves’ in these men and approach them with a sense of fraternity.

In recent appointments, a lot of men professors have been appointed. They [men committee members] often appoint their own protégés, and I see that a lot of professors have a soft spot for people who look like younger versions of themselves. They think, ‘How nice; I was like that when I was their age’. Then you get a stronger man-to-man relationship. It is a self-reinforcing process, and it is partly why most of the supervisors or group chairs have always been mostly men. (Humanities; woman)

Men have been working with men for ages. That is natural. It is easy. (Humanities; man)

These quotations illustrate gender practices in the attribution of ‘likeability’, which can be linked to the gendered concept of homophily—a preference for one’s own sex (Benschop, 2009; Bird, 1996; Ibarra, 1997) or homo-social reproduction (Holgersson, 2003; Kanter, 1977). This can subsequently lead to the reproduction of sameness. Several men committee members observed that it was easy for them to work with men. Although likeability is not seen as a decisive criterion for appointment, it does give a candidate certain ‘excellence points’. Perceptions of excellence are intertwined with likeability. Although this mechanism may make cooperation easier in the short term, it can also lead to a lack of diversity in the longer term.

A second gender practice in the evaluation of individual capital involves the trust that committee members have in a candidate’s ‘chances of survival’ in an academic environment. In some cases, committee members may assume that candidates whom they perceive as too ‘nice’, would not be capable of surviving within the competitive culture of academia.

Interviewee:

With regard to women applicants, I easily get the feeling that they are not going to make it because they are too nice or too kind. And that is just not possible. They have the qualities of a good scientist but you think, ‘That’s not how it works; you won’t survive that way’.

Interviewer:

Why shouldn’t they survive?

Interviewee:

Well, they do not feel comfortable with academic culture. In general, the exceptions are a lot tougher, more willing to fight for it, like men do. If you do not fit in with this culture, you’re disregarded for a position. […] Committees consider it as—we could give this chair to a woman candidate, but within a year, she would end up in the gutter. And, within male-dominated surroundings, that is something that works like a filter (STEM fields; man)

In this case, being ‘nice’ was presented as a reason for not nominating a woman candidate despite ‘her good qualities’. This man committee member reported losing confidence in women applicants who exhibit feminine traits, as he felt that they would not be tough enough to survive within the male-dominated culture. Notably, this discourse about women and certain qualifications is not about ‘excellence’ but about ‘survival’. On the other hand, however, men are typically not disqualified for displaying benevolent behaviour. Although insecurities can be disastrous for both sexes, men are seldom disqualified on the grounds of being ‘too nice’. For women, it is seen as evidence of indecisiveness and a lack of vigour, which results in the perception that they cannot stand up for themselves in the hierarchical academic environment. This can even be related to their bodies:

Once I heard the story of a very competent candidate, a woman, small in size, fragile, and a [male] member of the university board said: ‘Well, should we take that girl?’ So, physical appearance is something crucial. (Medical sciences; man)

As this quote illustrates, the woman’s appearance affected the committee members’ perceptions of her behaviour and abilities. The interviewee cast doubt on her suitability by referring to her as a ‘girl’, implying that a ‘girl’ would certainly not survive in a competitive academic environment.

This point is strongly related to perceptions of leadership. Our findings suggest that committee members question the ability of women to act as strong leaders. In the eyes of the interviewees, a full professor should also be a manager who has to represent the research group and make crucial decisions when the group is adrift. The academic leadership style envisaged by committee members could be characterized by a strong, charismatic (but not authoritarian), masculine style.

I can remember, there were certain concerns about her appearance. Actually, it had to do with leadership. I do not have the feeling that that was because she was a woman. I mean, if it had been a man, those concerns would have been there as well. However, those concerns were emphasized a little more because she was a woman; that is possible. (STEM fields; man)

In this quote, the interviewee reflects on the question of whether it would have been different if the candidate had been a man. The general image projected by this candidate was enough to disqualify her for selection, particularly in view of the fact that she was a woman. The skepticism and lack of confidence in women’s ability to provide academic leadership is not related to the relational or social elements of academic leadership (which are not in doubt); it has more to do with the ability to defend the interests of the research group in tough negotiations with university boards and committees.

We observed that the male committee members identified more easily with male candidates according to perceived similarity. Men also receive more leeway for displaying difficult behaviour, whereas women must walk a fine line between the Scylla of masculine overconfident behaviour and the Charybdis of excessively modest feminine behaviour.

Network connections

In addition to professional qualifications and individual qualities, our findings show that social network connections also make an important contribution to the status of excellence. This section discusses the importance of network connections in the construction of excellence.

One criterion for assessing a candidate’s excellence is the density and range of the candidate’s national and international network. In other words, it involves how well the candidate is connected to academics within and beyond the Netherlands.

This gentleman has been nominated because he is a scientist with an international reputation who, through this interdisciplinary approach, is capable of giving new impetus to academic developments that transcend traditional disciplines. He will be able to expand the proposed initiatives for cooperation with a prominent university in X. (Appointment reports)

International network connections with influential and renowned academics can be valuable resources for the department. A candidate’s recognized relationships with renowned academics can open up new network connections and future collaborations (Seibert et al., 2001).

Another way in which social network connections can exert influence on the selection decision is through the provision of references and through unsolicited recommendations. Our analysis reveals that committee members often rely more on the opinions of colleagues within their own networks than they do on information contained in the formal letters of reference supplied by candidates. The committee members involved in this study argued that they had greater confidence in the quality of candidates if they had been recommended by eminent colleagues. These academics exercise particular power in building the reputations of candidates, and they have an impact on the professorial decision-making process. They determine who is to be deemed excellent and who is not. One of the most revealing quotations in our data was as follows: ‘If I do not know them, they are not excellent’.

The composition of these networks of eminent academics thus plays a crucial role, and these networks tend to be homophilous (Husu, 2004). We do not simply argue that women lack the ‘right’ network connections with men; we argue that women are unable to benefit from the strong informal network connections in which men recommend and support each other, cite each other’s works, and keep each other informed. In the experience of some female interviewees, women are nominated for positions less frequently than men are:

Women are recommended less frequently. That is very common. It’s noticeable. (Medical sciences; woman)

When a candidate aims for a professorial position, he is obviously not going to shout, ‘Hello! Choose me!’ No, he will arrange for other people, academics, whom he considers influential to recommend him. This happens frequently. (Medical sciences; woman)

The sense of brotherhood between those men—it is not a conscious exclusion like, ‘We don’t want women’. It is more complex and subconscious. It is a combination of sentimentality and achievement, and that is given a lot of weight. They mix it up with the concept of quality. […] They seem to have a kind of homo-erotic bonding. [calling each other] ‘A spiritual twin!’ You can’t get involved in that [as a woman]. (Humanities; woman)

These networking practices have clear gender consequences: social networks help male professorial candidates in ways that are less accessible to women. Although the support for men is discerned by some women, it often goes unnoticed. Gender is practiced in networks, as men are more likely to be encouraged to apply for positions by their male support networks, and women are not recommended in the same way that men are (Bagilhole and Goode, 2001; Husu, 2001; Kantola, 2009; Van den Brink and Benschop, 2008). Since men tend to form social bonds more easily with other men, and the majority of academics in a senior positions are men, this could imply that women academics with no extended social network connections in academia have a disadvantage in attaining the status of excellence. Women tend to wield less influence than men do with elite academics in positions of power.

Discussion

Meritocracy emerges in modern universities in the guise of excellence. A substantial body of critical literature has tried to dismantle the neutrality and objectivity that are attributed to merit-based systems, and it has highlighted gender, race, and class inequalities that are inherent in these systems (Bourdieu, 1976; Knights and Richards, 2003; Scully, 1997). Nevertheless, universities throughout the world continue to use the status of excellence as a benchmark, equating excellence with the highest achievement of academic performance (Deem, 2009; Lamont, 2009).

This article contributes to our knowledge about how the ideology of the meritocracy conceals practices of inequality that have nothing to do with merit. It is not our intention to argue against the ideal of meritocracy, although we do take issue with the ideology of meritocracy and the way that it is used to present those in power as the most meritorious. Standards of merit are constructed by powerful academics who stand to benefit from a construction that is presented as a precise, objective, and univocal measure of excellence. The ideology of meritocracy implies that merit is individualized, that people bear the sole responsibility for the development of their merits, and that success is the product of their own doing. With regard to academic excellence, the claim of neutral, objective and precise measurement does not hold. Various researchers have scrutinized elements of academic excellence (e.g. journal rankings, citation indexes, peer review systems and grant applications) in order to demonstrate that hegemonic structures of inequality based on gender, race, and class are being reproduced (e.g. Adler and Harzing, 2009; Hearn, 2004; Laudel, 2006; Nkomo, 2009; Özbilgin, 2009).

We contribute to this literature by scrutinizing the construct of excellence in the evaluation of Dutch professorial candidates. The Dutch recruitment practices are relevant beyond this specific context as internationalization and the new managerialism have resulted in a convergence of global emphasis on excellence (Clark, 1987; Slaughter and Leslie, 1997). Our aim is to outline what is constructed as academic excellence at the micro-level, how evaluators operationalize this construct in criteria they use in academic evaluation, and how gender inequalities are imbued in the construction and evaluation of excellence. We have unpacked the notion of excellence by identifying three key qualifications that committee members use to select elite academics and by showing the gender practices existing in all of these qualifications. First, with regard to professional qualifications, we observed an emphasis on lengthy publication track records, which could lead to the under-valuation of other academic qualifications (e.g. teaching, management or both). Gender is practiced by committee members who present these qualifications as gender neutral, even though we have seen that many female academics have non-standard career trajectories and less research time, and these differences are not taken into account in decisions about which candidates to interview. Second, individual qualifications (e.g. perceived personality and leadership potential) play an important role in selection interviews. In this context, gender practices involve the tendency of committee members to attribute likability to men, which may grant them excellence points, whereas the tendency of committee members to attribute modesty to women may result in a loss of excellence points for these candidates. Third, network connections can provide candidates with extra value in the form of social credentials that reflect the candidate’s status and influence in the international community. Gender is practiced in strong male support networks that advantage male candidates by encouraging them to apply, recommending them to committee members, and nominating them for positions. Women are less likely to benefit from their networks in these ways.

The status of excellence is obtained by successfully exploiting all three key qualifications: a combination of professional and individual qualifications and network connections. It is important to note that these qualifications are also intertwined and that they reinforce each other. This is most evident when examining how network connections accelerate professional and individual qualifications: being well connected increases the likelihood that a scholar’s work will be disseminated and cited, and connections with committee members who like a candidate can influence the assessment of that candidate positively.

In other studies, the accumulation of advantages for those at the top has been labelled the Matthew effect (Merton, 1968). The gendered variant, known as the Matilda effect, concerns the systematic underestimation and minimization of women’s qualifications (Rossiter, 1993). Within all of the qualifications addressed in this study, we have found gender practices that generate disadvantages for women and privileges for men, accumulating to produce substantial inequalities within the construction of excellence. Valian (1998) notes that the many disadvantages experienced by women add up to form large inequalities in academia. Our findings show that this process continues through the ascription of excellence at the level of full professors.

We have shown that excellence is a composite concept and that the ‘sheep-with-five-legs standard’ implies that professorial candidates are expected to excel at each and every qualification. Not excelling in one qualification can be enough to cause a woman candidate to be rejected and thus to lose the competition. The problematic relationship between gender and excellence sets the bar higher for women; they must ‘have it all’. Committee members appear reluctant to let go of the ideology of excellence and to feel that doing so will lower the standards when women are involved, even though they are willing to do so with men (whether consciously or unconsciously). Men receive the benefit of the doubt: not excelling in one qualification is likely to be seen less as a problem than as an opportunity for growth and development. Similarity to evaluators helps evaluators to consider a candidate’s potential and to trust that shortcomings can be remedied in the near future. The visibility of female candidates adds to the committees’ application of high standards; because they expect that appointment decisions will be scrutinized very closely, committee members are careful to avoid the impression that they have appointed a candidate simply because she is a woman. The fact that it is only women who need to have it all, however, gets lost in the rhetoric of meritocracy and in the relatively unnoticed appointments of men. Men’s qualifications are systematically seen as more legitimate (Acker, 2006). Due to the scientific ethos of meritocracy, the influence of gender practices in academic evaluation is largely denied.

The implications of our study for change could be easily framed in terms of fixing female candidates in order to enable them to compete with male candidates (Ely and Meyerson, 2000). This would entail encouraging women to mimic the success formula of men by concentrating on research output (even at the expense of teaching new generations), by radiating confidence and toughness, and by infiltrating male informal networks. Teaching women to play this game, however, would not contribute to gender equality in academia. We argue that change should come in the form of turning the gender practices around. Although this would not be an easy task, shedding light on the gender practices that are inherent in the social construction of excellence would be the first step towards change. This research has demonstrated that each criterion that is applied in the selection of full professors contains one or more gender practices, thus defying arguments regarding the objectivity and the absence of power relations within this process. Increasing gender equality requires a simultaneous attack on all of the qualifications that are involved. Gender practices are so manifold and persistent that all qualifications should be amended in order to prevent inequality from creeping back in. Committees responsible for decision related to evaluation and promotion should be aware of these gender practices, and committees should be held accountable for the decisions they make. Based on the findings of this study, we propose the following recommendations. The assessment of professional qualifications should include teaching and administration, not only research. Furthermore, the evaluation of research output should take into account the actual research time available. This is important to correct gendered patterns in career trajectories and in the allocation of research time (van Engen et al., 2008). To come to a better assessment of individual qualifications and to increase the intersubjectivity in the assessment of candidates, it is important to have gender balanced committees. Additionally, all committee members should be trained in recognizing gender practices on the spot and explicate their feelings of trust that some candidates have and others lack the professorial disposition. Concerning the network connections, it is important that all positions are advertised openly so that everyone can apply, not only the members of the inner circle. Also, scouts should actively search for and invite female candidates inside and outside their network. Finally, senior academics have an important responsibility in supporting, encouraging and sponsoring women academics throughout their careers. While we recognize that there is no easy remedy for changing gender inequality in the political arena of academia (Van den Brink et al., 2010), these recommendations will contribute to countering gender inequalities in the construction of excellence.

Footnotes

Biographies

Marieke van den Brink is an Assistant Professor at the Institute for Management Research at the Radboud University Nijmegen, the Netherlands. Her main research interest focuses on ways (gender) inequalities are produced and countered in organizations, especially in recruitment and selection. She currently studies the possibilities for organizational change towards diversity and the resistance against change interventions. Her work has been published in Organization Studies, Gender, Work & Organization, Social Science & Medicine and Employee Relations. Address: Radboud University Nijmegen, Institute for Management Research, PO Box 9108, 6500 HK, Nijmegen, the Netherlands. Email: mcl.vandenbrink@fm.ru.nl

Yvonne Benschop is Professor of Organizational Behavior at the Institute for Management Research at the Radboud University of Nijmegen, the Netherlands. Her main inspirations are feminist organization studies and critical management studies. Current research interests include gender practices in networking and impression management and the role of power and resistance in the organizational changes brought about by gender mainstreaming and diversity management. Publications in English include articles in Organization Studies, Human Relations, Accounting, Organization and Society, International Journal of Human Resource Management, Journal of Organizational Change Management, Sex Roles and Gender, Work and Organization. Address: Radboud University Nijmegen, Institute for Management Research, PO Box 9108, 6500 HK, Nijmegen, The Netherlands. Email: Y.Benschop@fm.ru.nl

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