Sage Journals: Discover world-class research

Abstract

This paper explores the issue of gender, intersecting with other aspects of identity, in relation to academic staff and academic knowledge production in higher education institutions across Europe. The paper argues for the need to go beyond the ‘topline’ figures regarding gender equity (and intersecting aspects of identity) when considering diversity of academic staff, to a focus on the degree to which academics can meaningfully contribute to knowledge production. Looking across Europe, the paper focuses on a number of factors that are frequently brought up, but not often together, when discussing equity in the academy: gendered discourses of the most valued and legitimate forms of knowledge and the knower; the increasing levels of precarity in the academic workforce; and the growing influence of far right political discourse in Europe and beyond. Drawing on poststructuralist theories of gender, knowledge and precarity, I will be discussing how such dynamics combine to exacerbate already existing inequalities regarding who and what are regarded as legitimate knowledge and legitimate ‘knowers’ in European academia.

Keywords

Gender knowledge production social precarity higher education academic staff

This paper was inspired by the theme of the 2023 European Conference for Educational Research Conference: ‘The Value of Diversity in Education and Educational Research’. In particular, I want to focus on the issue of gender, intersecting with other aspects of identity, in relation to academic staff and academic knowledge production in higher education institutions across Europe. My aim is to explore a number of factors that are frequently brought up, but not often together, when discussing equity in the academy: gendered discourses of the most valued and legitimate forms of knowledge and the knower; the increasing levels of precarity in the academic workforce; and the growing influence of far right political discourse in Europe and beyond.

A major theme of the conference was the difficulty of pinpointing exactly what we mean when we utilise the term ‘diversity’. In relation to academic staff, ‘diversity’ in the academic body is usually taken to mean the diversity of representation (proportional to national statistics of the population as a whole) in terms of particular facets of a person’s identifications and experience, such as gender, gender identity, sexuality, age/maturity, social class, socio-economic background, race, ethnicity, religion and disability. This definition of diversity is of course problematic: being based on over-simplistic, socially constructed categorisations attempting to orderly map and quantify a messy, subjective reality in terms of how people understand themselves, and how others understand and categorise them (Ahmed, 2012). As a range of feminist and anti-racist scholars have argued, institutional goals in relation to student and staff diversity can end up becoming an acritical ‘numbers exercise’ serving commercial and business logics (see e.g. Bhopal, 2022; Deem and Ozga, 1997; Mirza, 2006). As I will go on to discuss, one area of inequity that requires an analysis that goes beyond basic employment statistics is the proportion of staff that are able to meaningfully participate in academic knowledge production, rather than simply those who have been given a staff card.

In exploring these dynamics I will be taking a poststructuralist approach that particularly draws on Foucault’s (1977, 1978) work on discourse and power/knowledge. A key aspect of Foucault’s work is a concern with the complex relationship between power and knowledge. In Foucault’s view, there is no objective ‘truth’: instead, a number of discourses (conversations, unfolding sets of ideas) about what is ‘true’ circulate at any one time or space. Some of these discourses will have more power than others to influence people’s conceptions as to what is ‘true’: the most powerful and widely socially accepted forming what Foucault calls ‘regimes of truth’. This includes socially accepted ways or methodologies of establishing what is true, and who is able to judge ‘what counts as true’ (Foucault, 1977: 131). Most dominant today is contemporary scientific knowledge (and academic knowledges more broadly), including the categorisation of knowledges into different disciplines and a normalisation of what is broadly agreed as legitimate knowledge within these disciplines (Foucault, 1978).

Of course, there is considerable multiplicity and competition between knowledges both within disciplines and from outside, including a multiplicity of religious, spiritual and political knowledges. For Foucault there is no power without resistance to that power, and Foucault spends considerable focus on tracing the genealogical flow of discourses that gain social power and legitimacy (such as medical knowledges, and conceptions of crime and punishment). However, there are (and will always be) a multiplicity of discourses – some more powerful than others - concerning who can act as knowledge producers and what are legitimate conditions and techniques for producing and disseminating knowledge. As Medina (2011) notes, Foucault’s theorisation emphasises that alternative knowledges – including marginalised, or in Foucault’s terms, ‘subjugated’ knowledges, also have certain degrees of power in certain contexts, and can therefore potentially challenge and change those discourses that are currently dominant (Foucault, 2003; Medina, 2011).

I also draw on feminist poststructuralist work that sees sex/gender, and indeed all other categorisations of identity as unstable and contextually made intelligible only through recourse to available discourses at any point in time/place (Butler, 1990; Hekman, 2007; Spivak, 1993). And although I focus primarily on gender in this paper, I have tried to include examples of intersectional work and weave in related research on other facets of identity, to try and outline some of the ways in which gendered dynamics will be experienced differently by different social groups in complex patterns of dis/advantage (Brah, 2022).

Taking such an approach, I will firstly be outlining the current state of play in terms of gender equity in academic positions in Europe. I will then touch on the pattern of gender representation across different disciplines and its relation to what are socially considered the most valuable forms of knowledge produced in academia. I will discuss the varieties of ways in which the casualisation of academic work arguably reflects and reinforces existing disadvantages and inequitable patterns in the higher education workforce. Finally, I will move to talk about the influence of far right discourses that also have an influence on what forms of knowledge can be produced, taught and circulated in the academy.

Equity and diversity in the European academic workforce

A 2019 survey of 159 Higher Education institutions (HEIs) from 36 countries across Europe found broad sectoral agreement in principle with the goals of Equity, Diversity and Inclusion [EDI], but that some dimensions of diversity were given more attention by institutions than others (Claeys-Kulik et al., 2019). In relation to academic staff, the aspects of diversity most commonly focused on were gender (83% of responding institutions) and disability (76%). Factors such as race/ethnicity, sexuality and socio-economic background received significantly less attention. Indeed, the majority of EU institutions do not collect data from staff or students on dimensions of diversity other than gender and disability – for some this relates to national law, for example it is illegal to collect data on ethnicity in France (Claeys-Kulik et al., 2019). As Bhopal and Henderson (2021) argue, there is also a tendency for race inequalities to become conflated with, and subsumed by, gender issues in EDI work.

With these caveats in mind, it is difficult to present an overall picture of many aspects of diversity in the academic workforce across Europe. In relation to gender at the EU level, in 2018 women comprised more than 40% of academic staff on average. However, looking at more senior positions, in the same year women made up only a quarter (26.2%) of grade A positions (equivalent to a full professorship). In 2019, women made up less than 25% of heads of institutions in the higher education sector across Europe (European Commission, Directorate-General for Research and Innovation [EC], 2021). The UK is one country that collects data on ethnicity: of academic staff with known ethnicity, 20% were from minority ethnic backgrounds in 2021–2022, and of professors with known ethnicity, 12% were from minority ethnic backgrounds. However, in the UK as in the rest of Europe, it is difficult to find statistics on other aspects of identity/positioning, let alone intersectional analysis (EC, 2021). In addition to under-representation in relation to gender and ethnicity, a recent government inquiry into diversity in STEM found evidence that ‘people with disabilities, those from disadvantaged socio-economic backgrounds and those who declared themselves as being LGBTQ+ were under-represented in some areas of STEM education, research and employment settings’ (House of Commons Science and Technology Committee [HCSTC], 2023: 3), but that there was a lack of available statistical data in relation to these characteristics, especially in relation to the workforce. In the UK the official statistics indicate that the number of academics with disabilities is 6%. However, it is likely that a sizeable proportion of academics are reluctant to disclose disability status due to fears of discrimination (Brewer, 2022; Olsen et al., 2020).

Despite such challenges, these data remain vital from an equity standpoint. As the Institute of Physics note, ‘the lack of comprehensive quantitative data on the picture of UK STEM makes change in the sector difficult to track and benchmark, meaning diversity improvement and the effectiveness of interventions cannot be measured’ (HCSTC, 2023: 11). Moreover, the utilisation of statistics can aid in the legitimisation of academic and activist calls to address inequity: in Foucaultian terms, the association of statistics as rooted in scientific method can work to increase the legitimacy of critical discourses, in an academic (and wider social) culture that valorises quantitative ‘objective’ data over the messy subjectivity of the qualitative.

However, if we are to look at equity and diversity amongst academic staff we also need to look beyond the ‘bare bones’ statistics in relation to employment in an academic role, to look at complexities such as the degree to which staff feel able to meaningfully contribute to teaching and knowledge production in ways that reflect their own expertise and experience. This involves a critical look at the inequitable power dynamics of academic cultures and practices more broadly (Steinþórsdóttir et al., 2019).

Gendered patterns in the production and valuing of academic knowledge

Writers such as Moore et al. (2011) and Cavaghan and Kulawik (2020) have discussed how the 21st century has seen an increasing importance placed on knowledge production as part of a ‘knowledge economy’. The utilisation of knowledge has become a crucial aspect of governance, and therefore the dynamics of the knowledge economy includes an explicitly governmental politicisation of knowledge and expertise. Academia, of course, is a key pillar of this influential economy (Allmer, 2018).

Knowledge production intricately reflects and reinforces wider social inequalities of power. The power knowledge has as a form of capital means that ‘as such, it is a site of contestation, inclusions, exclusions and maldistributions’ (Morley, 2015: 28). Postcolonial scholars have noted the unequal global relations of power in terms of which countries and regions are primarily places where data is extracted, and which countries and regions accumulate data and are in a position to construct and disseminate abstract knowledge (Medina, 2024).

Moreover, there are clear gendered and racialised patterns in terms of who is able to meaningfully contribute to academic knowledge production. A number of studies have shown that women are also less likely to be successful in securing research funding, to be named on research publications, and to act in knowledge ‘gatekeeper’ roles, for example as journal editors, or being invited to review manuscripts (Fagan and Teasdale, 2021; Helmer et al., 2017). Studies also indicate that women take on a disproportionate amount of non-research responsibilities. This not only includes teaching but also the range of lower-status service activities described as ‘academic housework’ (Aiston and Kent Fo, 2021; Heijstra et al., 2016; Jebsen et al., 2020; Sümer et al., 2020). As Nygaard et al. (2022) discuss, women academics are also more likely to take on collaboration work considered of lesser status, feeling greater pressure to act collegially at the expense of protecting their own writing time. Women in disciplines where they are the numerical minority are more likely to be asked to take on equity-related work. This can be compounded for women of colour, as academics of colour are more likely to be asked to serve on committees, teach on race whether or not this is their academic specialism, or lead EDI initiatives as a tokenistic gesture towards diversity (Ahmed, 2012, 2018; Doharty et al., 2021; Rollock, 2018).

Some of the reasons behind the gendered aspects of these dynamics are related to wider discourses around care: feminist research has outlined the ways in which women take a disproportionate amount of care responsibilities, and continue to face discrimination when trying to come back into the workforce after (paid or unpaid) maternity breaks (see e.g. Moreau and Robertson, 2019; Villar-Aguilés and Obiol-Francés, 2022). These responsibilities can severely constrain the degree to which such academics are able to sustain research publications and grant funding, and reach senior positions (Crimmins et al., 2023; Tsouroufli, 2020).

There are also more subtle but enduring discourses that can work to influence current social constructions of the typical or expected ‘academic’, which can have a hard to pin down yet pervasive influence. Those who hold any or multiple aspects of identity/positioning that were historically marginalised, on lines including gender, race/ethnicity, regional geography, age/maturity, disability, religion and sexuality – can still today find themselves constructed as ‘other’ to the expected academic norm (see e.g. Brewer, 2022; Crimmins et al., 2023; Dyer et al., 2019; Maylor, 2018; Mirza, 2006, 2018; Pearce et al., 2020). The progressive aim of fostering and growing alternative forms of knowledge authored by those in some way ‘other’ to traditional conceptions of academia therefore means including the successful countering of a conception that such forms of knowledge are in some way invalid or illegitimate in relation to ‘real’ knowledge (that is deemed objective and neutral). It also involves a challenge to the conception of who, in embodied terms, can be recognised or ‘made intelligible’ as a respected or valued knowledge producer. Such challenges remain necessary: for example Van Der Lee and Ellemers’ (2015) study of research award applications in the Netherlands showed markedly lower assessment scores given to women applicants in relation to ‘quality of researcher’, whereas, importantly, no such differences were reported in the other assessment criteria of ‘quality of proposal’ and ‘knowledge utilisation’ (see also Witteman et al., 2019).

A raft of feminist work has discussed how the socially constructed binary connections between objectivity and rationality with masculinity has led to historical conceptions that the seemingly ‘most’ objective and rational academic disciplines, including the sciences, mathematics, economics and philosophy, are more ‘suited’ and appropriate for boys and men – an enduring set of discourses that still arguably affects gender patterns of study and career choice in many countries across the globe (e.g. Burke, 2015; Harding, 1986; Hekman, 2007). Moreover, more masculinised forms of knowledge – particularly from STEM disciplines – are more likely to be socially valorised and more likely to attract political investment (Read and Leathwood, 2024). Moore et al. (2011) have discussed how the sciences have gained in prestige in recent decades due to their perceived political and economic importance. They argue that since the 1980s, scientists have been increasingly encouraged or even pressured to conduct research that will further goals of national economic development. Industry support for scientific research means an increase in prestige to the sciences, and particularly to those fields that attract industry funding (Moore et al., 2011). Finally, this also has a knock-on effect as to which disciplines are more likely to be able to offer secure, stable, permanent positions in academia.

Equity, diversity, and the casualisation of the academic workforce

Precarity of employment is an important issue when considering not only who is able to secure an academic position, but also who is able to meaningfully and sustainably participate in academic knowledge production. Precarity as a concept is most often used in connection to employment insecurities, particularly in relation to short-term, part-time, or fixed-term job contracts. Although I would also like to discuss employment-related precarity here, I have found the broader theorisation of the concept by Butler to be especially helpful. For Butler (2004, 2009), precarity relates particularly to people’s perceptions and experiences of being insecure or unstable in a situation (and the sometimes material consequences of people’s fears that this may engender). Butler is not referring here to insecurity felt in any situation (e.g., fear of slipping on an icy pavement), but insecurities induced by wider sociopolitical policies and practices. Crucial to Butler’s conception is that social precarity can be experienced by a wide range of people, but is more likely to be felt (and experienced more severely and for a longer duration) by those in already less advantaged groups.

Whilst there is an increase in casualised work in many countries across the global north in recent decades, academia has outpaced the trend, with a majority of academics working in ‘non-standard’ employment in many countries (OECD, 2021). Many have linked this rise to the influence of managerialist and neoliberal discourses in the sector valorising cost-cutting, the flexible ‘freedom’ of workers to ‘assume their own risks’ (Lorey, 2015; Pérez and Montoya, 2018: A3) and the intensification of the separation of research from teaching, with both marketised as commodities (see e.g. Courtois and O’Keefe, 2015; Le Feuvre et al., 2019; Sowa, 2020). A 2021 UK Universities and Colleges Union (UCU, 2021) report established that a third of academic staff in the UK are on fixed-term contracts, rising to 68% of staff on research-only contracts. In other countries the figures are even higher: OECD (2021) reported for example that 70% of academics in Finland, and 80% of scientific staff in Switzerland were on fixed-term contracts. Le Feuvre et al. (2020), Sautier (2021) and others have characterised systems such as the Swiss as a ‘survivor model’, where lengthy periods of precarity in academia are expected and normalised as inevitable.

Moreover, supporting Butler’s argument that precarity is more likely to felt by those in already less advantaged groups, statistics relating to employment precarity in HE show that women and black minority ethnic academics are more likely to hold casualised positions in academia. The most recent SHE Figures show that in 2019 the proportion of women researchers working part-time across the EU was higher than men: 11.1% and 7.2% respectively. The proportion of women researchers on precarious contracts in Higher Education in the EU was also slightly higher in 2019: 9% of women and 7.7% of men (EC, 2021). Whilst there is a relatively low gender gap between men and women academics working part-time in some European countries – in Italy, for example, the gap is 2.1% and France it is 3.1% – there are far higher percentage differences between women and men in countries such as Austria (17.8%), Iceland (12.3%) and Hungary (12.1%). There is a lack of available data in relation to trans and non-binary academics – although Pearce et al. (2020) note that overall ‘trans and non-binary people are . . ...overrepresented in precarious and low income employment, as well as being disproportionately unemployed, and more likely to live in unstable housing conditions’ (p. 883). As I have noted above, it is also difficult to find statistics in relation to race/ethnicity for academic staff in many European countries. However UK statistics show a stark disparity – whilst 30% of white academic staff are on fixed-contracts, this rises to 40% of black academic staff and 43% of Asian academic staff (UCU, 2021; see also Arday, 2022; Myers 2022). Writers such as Burlyuk and Rahbari (2023) have drawn attention to the specific dynamics of precarity and inequity experienced by migrant academics from the Global South in Europe. Warnock (2016) has also discussed the ways in which precarity ‘has become the new normal for working-class academics’ (p. 36). Indeed, back in the early 2000s writers such as Reay (2000) and Hey (2001) not only discussed the classed, gendered, and raced dynamics of academic casualisation, but also noted that the relationships between contract staff and their more secure staff managers and Principal Investigators could themselves replicate exploitative class dynamics found in private employment spheres.

Supporting Butler’s assertion above, there is also some evidence to suggest that precarity amongst academics is not only more likely to be experienced by those already in some ways ‘other’ to the traditional academic norm, but that these groups are also more likely to experience precarity more severely. O’Keefe and Courtois (2019) note that women in their study ‘were especially concentrated in forms of temporary work that is hourly paid or based on pro-rata and zero hours contracts while men were more likely to be on yearly or multi-year contracts’ (O’Keefe and Courtois, 2019: 469). In addition, women were more likely to have spent a longer period of their academic career in such contracts (O’Keefe and Courtois, 2019). Precarity also disproportionately affects academics who have recently gained doctoral qualifications and/or are at the early stages of an academic career (see Rothengatter and Hil, 2013). As the OECD report authors note, there are concerns that only those with the most resources and capital will be able to endure long periods of precarity and eventually secure a permanent position (OECD, 2021).

A range of studies have outlined the negative effects of conditions of precarity on such academics’ well-being. In common with those in such employment conditions more broadly, many precarious academics discuss anxieties around insecurity of income; lack of sickness, maternity, paternity or vacation benefits; and anxieties about not being able to plan for the future or take advantage of training (see e.g. Morris et al., 2022; Ylijoki, 2010). Less direct, but acutely felt, anxieties also relate to the possibility of being perceived as less ‘legitimate’ in the eyes of students and fellow academics (Read and Leathwood, 2020; Robson, 2023), and a tendency to individualise academic ‘failures’ (Loveday, 2018). In addition, and crucially in relation to this paper, being in a situation of precarity severely limits or excludes any time or capacity to do your own research, to apply for research or conference funding, or to focus on the topics you find most important (Burton & Bowman, 2022; Courtois and O’Keefe, 2015; Rowell and Morris, 2023; Sowa, 2020). Moreover, contract researchers on projects are also vulnerable to having their own ideas or work going unattributed and/or implicitly or explicitly attributed to the permanent project leads (Harris et al., 2023; Hey, 2001).

Another factor to note is that precarity affects certain disciplines more than others: and notably these disciplines are highly gendered in terms of numerical makeup of faculty and in their discursive cultural connotations. The culturally ‘masculinised’ STEM disciplines have generally fared better than other disciplines in terms of academic job losses in recent decades (Adsit et al., 2015). This was notable in the Covid-19 pandemic and aftermath, where in the UK, threatened or actual job losses were more often reported in the more ‘feminised’ arts, languages and humanities, and in the more ‘feminised’ STEM fields such as health sciences, where significantly more women academics work (Read and Leathwood, 2024).

Nevertheless, in STEM disciplines as elsewhere, women are more likely to be on precarious contracts. Reports from 2020 and 2021 indicated that many universities concentrated job cuts on their casualised staff (UCU, 2021). And research reported by the RRIF on the STEM workforce in Australia found that Covid-related job losses disproportionately affected women (Rapid Research Information Forum, 2020). This emphasises the point returned to a number of times in this paper: that it is those already seemingly in a minority or disadvantaged position that are more likely to experience the negative consequences of precarity, and feel the effects more severely, even in more highly socially and politically regarded disciplines.

So what are the consequences of precarity in relation to knowledge production? As already mentioned, if an academic is employed on a precarious contract they are often not able to conduct their own research, have space to write and publish (or be properly attributed for work they produce), or shape their teaching to their own interests and expertise. These constraints are exacerbated if dealing with financial struggles and/or caring responsibilities outside work. Karran and Mallinson (2017) cite security of employment as one of the four essential aspects of academic freedom. Their report, for the UK’s Universities and Colleges Union, compared academic freedom in the UK and the then other 27 EU nations, using comparable data from over 2000 UCU members in the UK and 4000 staff in universities in EU countries. They found that 14.1% of EU academics and 23.1% of UCU academics in the UK stated they had been bullied as a consequence of their academic views. Moreover, 19.1% of EU academics and 35.5% of UCU respondents indicated they practised self-censorship due to fears of loss of privileges, demotion, or even physical harm (Karran and Mallinson, 2017: 1).

Blell et al. (2022) argue that there are two dimensions to the way in which precarity can limit academic freedom. Firstly, those on precarious contracts are more likely to feel the need to conform and not ‘rock the boat’, for fear of damaging ‘networks of goodwill’ built up with permanent colleagues who may be able to provide future secure employment. A second dimension they define as ‘psychic limitations’ – fears of speaking critically due to potential backlash – which can be compared to the self-censorship described by Karran and Mallinson (2017) above. Blell et al. (2022) note that this can be experienced more severely by those in already ‘othered’ positions in academia: ‘Women of colour academics must already develop strategies for survival and success in a space dominated by masculinity and whiteness. . ..[and this is] exacerbated by conditions of job precarity faced disproportionately by women and people of colour’ (p. 1825; see also Bhopal, 2022). Similarly, Pearce (2021) has pointed out the constraints on academic freedom for trans and pro-trans scholars who may be subject to hate speech or physical violence: ‘If we are afraid to speak out, or have to adapt research to minimise harassment, we are not truly free to undertake our studies’ (Pearce, 2021: 1461).

Precarity not only threatens the academic freedom of all that experience it, but that it also disproportionately affects those who are already under-represented, and in the wake of the pandemic lockdowns these inequitable patterns have only intensified. In the final section of this paper I also want to discuss another dynamic that is impinging on academic freedom and academic knowledge-making in Europe and in countries across the globe: challenges from the political far right.

The influence of the far right in academic representation and the valuing of knowledge

A plethora of work has charted the specific rhetoric of right-wing ‘neo-populism’ and ultraconservative political groups across Europe and the globe in the last few decades (see e.g. Carter, 2005; Krämer, 2014; Wodak and Krzyzanowski, 2017). These movements have a wide variety of characterisations, but often contain a conception of a movement of the ordinary ‘left behind’ against a perceived cultural and intellectual elite, including the universities (Clarke and Newman, 2017; Read, 2018). Populist and ultraconservative movements also vary in terms of their conception of, and position towards, knowledge relating to aspects of diversity such as gender, sexuality and race. For example, in some iterations of far right rhetoric the notion of women’s rights, and/or gay and lesbian rights, is actively supported. However, as De Lange and Mügge (2015) note, this is often advocated as a means to make a distinction between what they construct to be the ‘civilised’ west and ‘repressive’ east, particularly in relation to Islam. They also point out that ‘gender ideologies’ in right-wing movements often construct gender as a product of essentialised ‘natural differences’ between (cis-) men and women. This can be accompanied by a particular focus on women’s roles as mothers and within the family as something that needs to be ‘protected’ due to their idealised role as the ‘mothers of the ‘nation’, echoing nationalist rhetoric from colonial times (De Lange and Mügge, 2015: 66). As such, there has risen a definite pattern whereby far right movements are challenging the legitimacy of ‘gender knowledges’ that have developed in the academic social sciences, especially social constructionist and poststructuralist feminism, queer studies and transgender studies. Vlase and Terian (2023), discussing the case of Romania, note that Gender Studies in Higher Education largely emerged in the post-communist era, connected to the support of US donors and later the ‘EU-isation’ of Higher Education, where the embracing of discourses including liberal conceptions of gender equality was a condition of EU membership (Vlase and Terian, 2023). However, they note academic resistance to feminist research, which is seen by some as ideological and thus not ‘objective’. It is this ostensibly ‘rational’ argument against gender and other forms of equity research that has also been taken up and intensified by some right-wing populist politicians in the Netherlands and the UK who have framed equality measures as ‘cultural Marxism’ (Korulczuk, 2020: 701). This has parallels with the ongoing attack on Critical Race Theory [CRT] in many right-wing quarters, where CRT is argued to be itself discriminatory and anti-democratic (Filimon and Ivănescu, 2020).

Korulczuk (2020) notes that attacks on gender knowledge can take religious/nationalist and neoliberal forms. In an example of a nationalist conservative attack on gender knowledge, Korolczuk (2020) analyses ultraconservative rhetoric around abortion in Poland to argue that there is an attempt not only to de-legitimise existing feminist knowledges ‘but also to establish an alternative set of scientifically legitimised truths about gender, sexuality, and family’ (p. 695). Thus, ‘right-wing populists and religious fundamentalists opposing “gender” seek not only political but also epistemic power’ (Korolczuk, 2020: 695). As well as noting resistances to gender studies by academics, Romanian feminist researchers have also documented right-wing popular resistance to the subject, particularly a resistance to the concept of the social construction of gender. This included an (ultimately unsuccessful) attempt to legislate against it being taught in any educational space, including extracurricular education (Brodeală and Epure, 2021).

De Lange and Mügge (2015) similarly note how anti-gender movements can be identified across Europe, varying slightly according to national context. In Poland and Italy anti-gender rhetoric has focused on an attack on abortion rights; in France, opposition to marriage equality; and in Germany, a critique of the new sex education curriculum (see also Kuhar and Pattenotte, 2017). Pető also discusses the influence of anti-gender studies movements in Hungary, including the 2018 revoking by the Hungarian government for the licencing of a Masters programme in Gender Studies. The government first explained the move as purely economic: that there was no need for graduates with these skills in the labour market, and/or a lack of demand for the topic. However, later they moved on to a different explanation: that the gender studies programme was incompatible with Christian values (Pető, 2020; see also Tardos and Paksi, 2024).

Neoliberal forms of ultraconservatism also ostensibly appeal to the dispassionate logic of the market in targeting courses and programmes such as gender studies and other areas discussing equity and social justice. Adsit et al. (2015) have outlined how gender studies programmes and courses can be closed through utilising the language of meritocracy in the ‘marketplace of ideas’. Feminist teaching has become increasingly vulnerable in an era where women’s and gender studies programmes have largely been closed and such forms of knowledge are unevenly taken up in ‘mainstream’ HE curricula (Hinton-Smith et al., 2021; Wright, 2016).

The disproportionate vulnerability of the arts and humanities, languages, and social sciences towards closure and censure are couched as impartial but inevitably feel politicised. If they are not explicitly motivated by anti-equity and diversity rhetoric, then this is the result. For, as we have seen, such attacks and cuts are often focused in the same areas of the academy where we see a greater diversity of academic staff; and where we see the production of knowledge that seeks to explore dynamics of inequity in relation to aspects of diversity such as gender, sexuality and race. Attacks on such disciplines in turn creates extra pressures on staff that are already marginalised (Blell et al., 2022).

Conclusion

In this paper I have outlined some key dynamics that need to be considered in any genuinely progressive aim of achieving gender equity in contemporary European academia. I have discussed, firstly, we need to take an intersectional approach to gender equity that also takes into account the wide disparities of participation in the academy in relation to factors such as sexuality, social class background, gender identity, disability and race. There is an urgent need for quantitative data in relation to a spectrum of aspects of academic staff identities and positionings, as well as data on contract type, to allow for the clearest possible intersectional analysis of the diversity of academic staff in HE across the continent and beyond.

We also need to move beyond the available statistics to focus on issues such as the ability of academic staff, once they have entered the door, to have the academic freedom to meaningfully engage in knowledge production. This in turn requires the inclusion of analysis of – and urgent action in relation to – two further phenomena that are presenting a serious challenge to equity, diversity and academic freedom in the academy: the pervasive and seemingly intractable threats of the ‘norm’ of precarity in academic life, and the threat to academic freedom of far right attacks on academic knowledge regarding gender and facets of identity, diversity and social justice. Many activist groups and networks have been established to combat these issues, from union activism (see e.g. UCU, 2021) to groups such as the Network for Decent Labour in Academia (https://mittelbau.net/) and the Scholars at Risk Network ((https://www.scholarsatrisk.org/resources/free-to-think-2023/) (see also Vatansever, 2023). In tandem with, and intertwined with, direct action, more qualitative, in-depth and intersectional research is urgently needed to provide further tools and resources from which to challenge and change dominant inequitable cultures and practices in the academy.

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank the European Conference for Educational Research 2023 Organising Committee for their invitation to present at the conference in Glasgow, August 2023.

Declaration of conflicting interests

The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

ORCID iD

Barbara Read

Author biography

Barbara Read is Professor of Education at the School of Education, University of Glasgow. She is a sociologist of education, with a particular interest in gender and intersectional inequalities in relation to student and staff experience in Higher Education, and the issue of precarity amongst academic staff. She is one of the current Editors of British Educational Research Journal.

References

Adsit

Doe

Allison

, et al (2015) Affective activism: Answering institutional productions of precarity in the corporate university. Feminist Formations 27(3): 21–48.

Ahmed

(2012) On Being Included: Racism and Diversity in Institutional Life. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

Ahmed

(2018) Rocking the boat: Women of colour as diversity workers. In: Arday

Mirza

(eds) Dismantling Race in Higher Education: Racism, Whiteness and Decolonizing the Academy. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, pp.331–348.

Aiston

Kent Fo

(2021) The silence/ing of academic women. Gender and Education 33(2): 138–155.

Allmer

(2018) Precarious, always-on and flexible: A case study of academics as information workers. European Journal of Communication 33(4): 381–395.

Arday

(2022) ‘More to prove and more to lose’: Race, racism and precarious employment in higher education. British Journal of Sociology of Education 43(4): 513–533.

Bhopal

(2022) Academics of colour in elite universities in the UK and the USA: The ‘unspoken system of exclusion’. Studies in Higher Education 47(11): 2127–2137.

Bhopal

Henderson

(2021) Competing inequalities: Gender versus race in higher education institutions in the UK. Educational Review 73(2): 153–169.

Blell

Liu

SJS

Verma

(2022) ‘A one-sided view of the world’: Women of colour at the intersections of academic freedom. The International Journal of Human Rights 26 (10): 1822–1841.

10.

Brah

(2022) Decolonial Imaginings: Intersectional Conversations and Contestations. London: Goldsmiths.

11.

Brewer

(2022) Disability in Higher Education: Investigating Identity, Stigma and Disclosure Amongst Academics. London: McGraw Hill.

12.

Brodeală

Epure

(2021) Nature versus nurture: ‘Sex’ and ‘gender’ before the Romanian Constitutional Court. European Constitutional Law Review 17: 724–752.

13.

Burke

(2015) Re/Imagining higher education pedagogies: Gender, emotion and difference. Teaching in Higher Education 20(4): 388–401.

14.

Burlyuk

Rahbari

(2023) (eds) Migrant Academics’ Narratives of Precarity and Resilience in Europe. Cambridge: Open Book Publishers.

15.

Burton

Bowman

(2022) The academic precariat: Understanding life and labor in the neoliberal academy. British Journal of Sociology of Education 43(4): 497–512.

16.

Butler

(1990) Gender Trouble. London: Routledge.

17.

Butler

(2004) Precarious Life: The Powers of Mourning and Violence. London: Verso.

18.

Butler

(2009) Frames of War: When is Life Grievable? London: Verso.

19.

Carter

(2005) The Extreme Right in Western Europe: Success or Failure? Manchester: Manchester University Press.

20.

Cavaghan

Kulawik

(2020) Experts, idiots and liars: The gender politics of knowledge and expertise in turbulent times. Social Politics: International Studies in Gender, State & Society 27(4): 643–647.

21.

Claeys-Kulik

Jørgensen

Stöber

(2019) Diversity, Equity and Inclusion in European Higher Education Institutions. Results from the INVITED Project. Brussels: European University Association.

22.

Clarke

Newman

(2017) ‘People in this country have had enough of experts’: Brexit and the paradoxes of populism. Critical Policy Studies 11(1): 101–116.

23.

Courtois

ADM

O’Keefe

(2015) Precarity in the ivory cage: Neoliberalism and casualisation of work in the Irish higher education sector. Journal for Critical Education Policy Studies 13(1): 43–66.

24.

Crimmins

Casey

Tsouroufli

(2023) Intersectional barriers to women’s advancement in higher education institutions rewarded for their gender equity plans. Gender and Education 35(6–7): 653–670.

25.

De Lange

Mügge

(2015) Gender and right-wing populism in the Low Countries: Ideological variations across parties and time. Patterns of Prejudice 49(1–2): 61–80.

26.

Deem

Ozga

(1997) Women managing diversity in a postmodern world. In: Marshall

(ed.) Feminist Critical Policy Analysis. London: Falmer, pp.25–40.

27.

Doharty

Madriaga

Joseph-Salisbury

(2021) The university went to ‘decolonise’ and all they brought back was lousy diversity double-speak! Critical race counter-stories from faculty of colour in ‘decolonial’ times. Educational Philosophy and Theory 53(3): 233–244.

28.

Dyer

Townsend

Kanani

, et al (2019) Exploring the Workplace for LGBT+ Physical Scientists. London: Institute of Physics, Royal Astronomical Society and Royal Society of Chemistry.

29.

European Commission, Directorate-General for Research and Innovation (2021) She Figures 2021. Gender in Research and Innovation: Statistics and Indicators. Brussels: European Commission Publications Office.

30.

Fagan

Teasdale

(2021) Women professors across STEMM and non-STEMM disciplines: Navigating gender and playing the game. Work, Employment and Society 35(4): 774–792.

31.

Filimon

Ivănescu

(2024) Bans, sanctions, and dog-whistles: A review of anti-critical race theory initiatives adopted in the United States since 2020. Policy Studies 45(2): 183–204.

32.

Foucault

(1977) Truth and power. In: Foucault

(ed.) Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings, 1972-1977. New York, NY: Random House, pp.109–133.

33.

Foucault

(1978) Security, Territory, Population: Lectures at the College de France, 1978-79. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

34.

Foucault

(2003) Society Must Be Defended: Lectures at the Collège de France, 1975-76. London: Picador.

35.

Harding

(1986) The Science Question in Feminism. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.

36.

Harris

Smithers

Spina

, et al (2023) Disrupting dominant discourses of the other: Examining experiences of contract researchers in the academy. Studies in Higher Education 48(1): 37–48.

37.

Heijstra

Steinthorsdóttir

Einarsdóttir

(2016) Academic career making and the double-edged role of academic housework. Gender and Education 29(6): 764–780.

38.

Hekman

(2007) Gender and Knowledge: Elements of a Postmodern Feminism. Cambridge: Polity.

39.

Helmer

Schottdorf

Neef

, et al (2017) Bias in scholarly peer review. ELife 6: 1–18.

40.

Hey

(2001) The construction of academic time: Sub/contracting academic labour in research. Journal of Education Policy 16(1): 67–84.

41.

Hinton-Smith

Marvell

Morris

, et al (2021) ‘It’s not something that we think about with regard to curriculum.’ Exploring gender and equality awareness in higher education curriculum and pedagogy. Gender and Education 34(5): 495–511.

42.

House of Commons Science and Technology Committee (2023) Diversity and Inclusion in STEM. Fifth Report of Session 2022-23. Report no. HC 95, 24 March. London: House of Commons.

43.

Jebsen

Abbott

Oliver

, et al (2020) A review of barriers women face in research funding processes in the UK. Psychology of Women and Equalities Review 3(1&2): 3–14.

44.

Karran

Mallinson

(2017) Academic Freedom in the UK: Legal and Normative Protection in a Comparative Context. Report for the Universities and Colleges Union. London: Universities and Colleges Union.

45.

Korolczuk

(2020) Counteracting challenges to gender equality in the era of anti-gender campaigns: Competing gender knowledges and affective solidarity. Social Politics: International Studies in Gender, State & Society 27(4): 694–717.

46.

Köttig

Bitzan

Petö

(eds) (2017) Gender and Far Right Politics in Europe. Basingstoke: Palgrave.

47.

Krämer

(2014) Media populism: A conceptual clarification and some theses on its effects. Communication Theory 24(1): 42–60.

48.

Kuhar

Paternotte

(2017) Anti-Gender Campaigns in Europe. Mobilizing against Equality. London and New York: Rowman & Littlefield International Ltd.

49.

Le Feuvre

Bataille

Kradolfer

, et al (2019) The gendered diversification of academic career paths in comparative perspective. In: Murgia

Poggio

(eds) Gender and Precarious Research Careers: A Comparative Analysis. London: Routledge, pp.50–80.

50.

Le Feuvre

Bataille

Sautier

(2020) Probationary or second-class citizens? Postdoctoral experiences in the Swiss context. In: Sümer

(ed.) Gendered Academic Citizenship. Heidelberg: Springer International, pp.65–101.

51.

Lorey

(2015) State of Insecurity: Government of the Precarious. London: Verso.

52.

Loveday

(2018) ‘Luck, chance and happenstance’: Perceptions of success and failure amongst fixed-term academic staff in UK Higher Education. British Journal of Sociology 69(3): 758–775.

53.

Maylor

(2018) Leadership for race and social justice in higher education. In: Arday

Mirza

(eds) Dismantling Race in Higher Education: Racism, Whiteness and Decolonizing the Academy. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, pp.349–364.

54.

Medina

(2011) Toward a Foucaultian epistemology of resistance: Counter-memory, epistemic friction, and guerrilla pluralism. Foucault Studies 12: 9–35.

55.

Medina

(2024) On epistemic decentralising: Infrastructuring knowledge beyond global north. Globalisation, Societies and Education. Epub ahead of print 23 February 2024. DOI: 10.1080/14767724.2024.2307876.

56.

Mirza

(2006) Transcendence over diversity: Black women in the academy. Policy Futures in Education 4(2): 101–113.

57.

Mirza

(2018) Black bodies ‘out of place’ in academic spaces: Gender, race, faith and culture in post-race times. In: Arday

Mirza

(eds) Dismantling Race in Higher Education: Racism, Whiteness and Decolonizing the Academy. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, pp.175–193.

58.

Moore

Kleinman

Hess

Frickel

(2011) Science and neoliberal globalization: A political sociological approach. Theory & Society 40(5): 505–532.

59.

Moreau

Robertson

(2019) ‘You scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours’? Support to academics who are carers in higher education. Social Sciences 8(6): 164.

60.

Morley

(2015) Troubling intra-actions: Gender, neo-liberalism and research in the global academy. Journal of Education Policy 31(1): 28–45.

61.

Morris

Kadiwal

Telling

, et al (2022) Restorying imposter syndrome in the early career stage: Reflections, recognitions and resistance. In: Addison

Breeze

Taylor

(eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Imposter Syndrome in Higher Education. Basingstoke: Palgrave, pp.225–240.

62.

Myers

(2022) Racism, zero-hours contracts and complicity in higher education. British Journal of Sociology of Education 43(4): 584–602.

63.

Nygaard

Piro

Aksnes

(2022) Gendering excellence through research productivity indicators. Gender and Education 34(6): 690–704.

64.

O’Keefe

Courtois

(2019) ‘Not one of the family’: Gender and precarious work in the neoliberal university. Gender, Work & Organization 26(4): 463–479.

65.

OECD (2021) Reducing the precarity of academic research careers. OECD Science, Technology and Industry Policy Papers, no. 113. Paris: OECD Publishing.

66.

Olsen

Griffiths

Soorenian

, et al (2020) Reporting from the margins: Disabled academics’ reflections on higher education. Scandinavian Journal of Disability Research 22(1): 265–274.

67.

Pearce

(2021) Academic freedom and the paradox of tolerance. Nature Human Behaviour 5: 1461.

68.

Pearce

Erikainen

Vincent

(2020) Afterword: TERF wars in the time of Covid-19. The Sociological Review 68(4): 882–888.

69.

Pérez

Montoya

(2018) The unsustainability of the neoliberal public university: Towards an ethnography of precarity in academia. Revista de Dialectología y Tradiciones Populares 73(1): A1–A16.

70.

Pető

(2020) Academic freedom and gender studies: An alliance forged in fire. Gender and Sexuality 15: 9–24.

71.

Rapid Research Information Forum (2020) The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on women in the STEM workforce. Research Brief. Canberra: Australian Academy of Science.

72.

Read

(2018) Truth, masculinity and the anti-elitist backlash against the university in the age of Trump. Teaching in Higher Education 23(5): 593–605.

73.

Read

Leathwood

(2020) Casualised academic staff and the lecturer-student relationship: Shame, (im)permanence and (il)legitimacy. British Journal of Sociology of Education 41(4): 539-554.

74.

Read

Leathwood

(2024) Discourses of university research in precarious times: A spatial/temporal analysis. In: Acker

Yjiloki

McGinn

(eds) The Social Production of Research: Perspectives on Funding and Gender. London: SRHE & Routledge, pp. 51–65.

75.

Reay

(2000) ‘Dim Dross?’ Marginalised voices both inside and outside the academy. Women’s Studies International Forum 23(1): 13–21.

76.

Robson

(2023) Stigma and spoiled identities: Rescripting career norms for precariously employed academic staff. British Journal of Sociology of Education 44(1): 183–198.

77.

Rollock

(2018) The heart of whiteness: Racial gesture politics, equity and higher education. In: Arday

Mirza

(eds) Dismantling Race in Higher Education: Racism, Whiteness and Decolonizing the Academy. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, pp.313–330.

78.

Rothengatter

Hil

(2013) A precarious presence: Some realities and challenges of academic casualization in Australian universities. Australian Universities Review 55: 51–59.

79.

Rowell

Morris

(2023) ‘The sand’s going to run out at any minute’. A collaborative autoethnography of class, gender and precarity in academia. Access: Critical Explorations of Equity in Higher Education 11(1): 28–46.

80.

Sautier

(2021) Move or perish? Sticky mobilities in the Swiss academic context. Higher Education 82: 799–822.

81.

Sowa

(2020) On the uses of precarity. Knowledge, innovation and academic labour in precarious times. In: Rachwal

Hepp

Kergel

(eds) Precarious Places: Social, Cultural and Economic Aspects of Uncertainty and Anxiety in Everyday Life. Wiesbaden: Springer, pp.123–138.

82.

Spivak

(1993) Outside in the Teaching Machine. London: Routledge.

83.

Steinþórsdóttir

Smidt

Pétursdóttir

, et al (2019) New managerialism in the academy: Gender bias and precarity. Gender Work and Organisation 26: 124–139.

84.

Sümer

O’Connor

Le Feuvre

(2020) The contours of gendered academic citizenship. In: Sümer

(ed.) Gendered Academic Citizenship. Heidelberg: Springer International, pp.1–36.

85.

Tardos

Paksi

(2024) The precarity paradox: Experiences of female PhD-holders across career stages in STEM fields. Learning and Teaching in the Social Sciences.

86.

Tsouroufli

(2020) Gender and classed performances of good mother and academic professional in Greek academia. European Journal of Women’s Studies 27(1): 9–24.

87.

Universities and Colleges Union (2021) Precarious Work in Higher Education: Insecure Contracts and How They Have Changed Over Time. London: UCU.

88.

Van der Lee

Ellemers

(2015) Gender contributes to personal research funding success in The Netherlands. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA 112(40): 12349–12353.

89.

Vatansever

(2023) Introduction. In Vatansever

Kölemen

(eds) Academic Freedom and Precarity in the Global North: Free as a Bird. London: Routledge, pp. 1–14.

90.

Villar-Aguilés

Obiol-Francés

(2022) Academic career, gender and neoliberal university in Spain: The silent precariousness between publishing and care-giving. British Journal of Sociology of Education 43(4): 623–638.

91.

Vlase

Terian

(2023) The production of gender- specific scholarly literature in Romania: The weak institutionalisation of Gender Studies in higher education. Studies in Higher Education 48(12): 1825–1840.

92.

Warnock

(2016) Paradise lost? Patterns and precarity in working-class academic narratives. Journal of Working-Class Studies 1(1): 28–44.

93.

Witteman

Hendricks

Straus

, et al (2019) Are gender gaps due to evaluations of the applicant or the science? A natural experiment at a national funding agency. The Lancet 393: 531–540.

94.

Wodak

Krzyzanowski

(2017) Right-wing populism in Europe & USA: Contesting politics and discourse beyond ‘Orbanism’ and ‘Trumpism’. Journal of Language and Politics 16(4): 471–484.

95.

Wright

(2016) Whatever happened to the f-word in higher education. Journal of Gender Studies 25(2): 215–227.

96.

Ylijoki

(2010) Future orientations in episodic labour: Short-term academics as a case in point. Time and Society 19(3): 365–386.

Gender equity in academic knowledge production: the influence of politics,power and precarity

Abstract

Keywords

Equity and diversity in the European academic workforce

Gendered patterns in the production and valuing of academic knowledge

Equity, diversity, and the casualisation of the academic workforce

The influence of the far right in academic representation and the valuing of knowledge

Conclusion

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

Declaration of conflicting interests

Funding

ORCID iD

Author biography

References