Gender and Precarious Research Careers

A Comparative Analysis

Annalisa Murgia, Barbara Poggio, Annalisa Murgia, Barbara Poggio

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2018
• eBook ISBN: 9781351781411
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Sociology
• Index: Social Sciences

The literature on gender and science shows that scientific careers continue to be characterised – albeit with important differences among countries – by strong gender discriminations, especially in more prestigious positions. Much less investigated is the issue of which stage in the career such differences begin to show up.

Gender and Precarious Research Careers aims to advance the debate on the process of precarisation in higher education and its gendered effects, and springs from a three-year research project across institutions in seven European countries: Italy, Belgium, the Netherlands, Iceland, Switzerland, Slovenia and Austria. Examining gender asymmetries in academic and research organisations, this insightful volume focuses particularly on early careers. It centres both on STEM disciplines (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) and SSH (Social Science and Humanities) fields.

Offering recommendations to design innovative organisational policies and self-tailored 'Gender Equality Plans' to be implemented in universities and research centres, this volume will appeal to students and researchers interested in fields such as Gender Studies, Sociology of Work and Industry, Sociology of Knowledge, Business Studies and Higher Education.

Part I

The state of the art

1 Gender and precarious careers in academia and research

Macro, meso and micro perspectives

Rossella Bozzon, Annalisa Murgia and Barbara Poggio¹

Introduction

Over the past few decades, the world of academia and research has undergone substantial transformations, which have deeply affected both the production models and practices of science, as well as on-the-job experiences within this sector. In particular, a commodification process has occurred, which has gradually turned higher education into fertile terrain for marketisation agendas (Levidow 2002) and has changed universities from education institutions into business organisations with accompanying productivity targets (McNair 1997).

This process has been highlighted by the progressive decrease in public investment, which has subsequently led to a greater need to search for funds and external funding. On one hand, this has resulted in an increase in competition between and within the organisations, whilst on the other hand it constitutes the cause of growing instability in terms of working conditions and careers.

What are the implications of such transformations for those who work in the world of academia and research, and above all for those who are approaching this world today? Early career researchers – who despite the low chances of success still try to enter this particular job market – will have to make a significant investment, both in terms of time availability and in identity construction. On one hand, if research as a job has always been known for its strong overlap between working hours and time devoted to the rest of life, the current processes have put researchers under even more pressure, with the working environment becoming all the more frantic and frenetic. On the other hand, the emerging organisational models contribute to defining specific subjectivities, able to respond to and comply with the demands of individualisation, competition and complete dedication to work imposed by the new agenda and the increasing casualisation of the academic workforce.

This chapter therefore focuses on how such processes tend to intensify the already significant gender inequalities present within the academic context. To understand the processes of precarisation, different levels of analysis need to be adopted. First, the focus is on precarious work as a condition that is atypical and contingent, characterised by uncertainty, unpredictability of income streams, insecurity, vulnerability and lack of protection and regulation (Crompton, Gallie and Purcell 2002). Second, attention is paid to precarisation conceptualised as a major trend of the entire corpus of social relationships, now destructured by the diffusion of risk (Beck 1992), and on precariousness as “an experiential condition investing a person’s life as a quality inherent to that person and his/her specific position” (Armano, Bove and Murgia 2017, p. 4). Focusing on academia, the aim is then to examine the increase of temporary jobs, but also how early career researchers experience precariousness in their everyday organisational lives, biographical contingencies and personal aspirations, and to explore the ambiguous and composite processes that underpin academic careers. Researchers, in fact, are required to be the work that they do, without distinction between work time and other times, between home and work. They must devote relational and emotional skills to production, and must equally be voluntarily and whole-heartedly committed to the fulfilment of their professional goals. In this scenario, on the one hand, early career researchers experience significant degrees of freedom, in which research is seen as a ‘dream job’. On the other, they are confronted with strict rules of competition, combined with an ‘extensification’ and ‘overflow’ of work, finding themselves alone in dealing with uncertainty about the future. In order to understand how gender differences are embedded in these ambivalences, the growing phenomenon of precarisation in higher education needs to be further investigated.

This chapter will thus emphasise the relationship between gender inequality and precariousness in the world of research on three different levels of analysis, which are deeply interwoven. This will allow the reader to examine gender differences among early career researchers from different perspectives: first, from the point of view of the academic labour market, second from an organisational standpoint, and finally by looking at the experiential and subjective dimension. The conclusions will include a reflection on the policies and practices that can counter the reproduction of gender inequalities in the world of research which – for early career researchers – are tightly interwoven with current precarisation processes.

Gendered careers in the academic labour market

Higher education and research have to cope with the conflicting pressures embedded in long term trends in modern societies. University systems are undergoing a global process of change that affects the economic and social role played by higher education institutions, their organisation and inner structure (Maassen and Stensaker 2011; Reale and Primeri 2015), as well as the position of the academic profession (Machado-Taylor, Meira Soares and Teichler 2017). Such transformations are related to the phenomena of globalisation, the expansion of a knowledge society, the growing importance of education systems – which are taking on an increasingly central role – and the transformation and decline of the welfare systems and the renewed relevance of the ‘market forces’ in defining economic and social policies (Scott 2009). The increase in the number of people, especially women, who pursue a PhD and try for a career in the world of academia and research (European Commission 2016) is compounded by levels of competition generated by recent transformations in the academic labour market, in the management of higher education institutions, and in the regulation of academic careers. On one hand, a number of transformation processes involve all countries, such as the commodification of research activities, higher investments in the STEM field, the preponderance of applied scientific knowledge that fits the demands of the market, as well as the spread of diversification and specialisation processes related to academic work. On the other hand, the results of such trends and their effect on both early career stages and gender inequality in academia are mediated by how the previous institutional structures, the regulation of academic careers, the labour market(s), and the welfare and gender regimes act as a ‘filter’ for these global pressures (Marginson and van der Wende 2007; Enders and de Weert 2009; Le Feuvre 2015).

This section is thus dedicated to describing how the main macro and institutional trends affecting the regulation and management of higher education systems and institutions are in fact redefining the demand for academic work. Attention is also paid to the ways in which different scientific disciplines are appreciated and considered more or less prestigious in the process of knowledge production, division of labour and flexibilisation during the early stages of academic careers, thus affecting the conditions and factors fuelling and (re)producing gender asymmetries.

The transformations of the demand for work between marketisation and growing competition

National university systems in general, as well as academic institutions in isolation, are confronted by contexts of an increasingly competitive and globalised nature. On one hand, the establishment of a knowledge-based society has strengthened the role of academic institutions in the ‘production’ of highly specialised skills, which are necessary to face the challenges of such a knowledge-based economy (Marginson and Rhoades 2002). On the other hand, the increased availability of a highly educated workforce and the importance of scientific and technical knowledge have facilitated the generation of new market areas, where one can develop and endorse research and educational activities. Such new areas go beyond national, disciplinary and institutional borders, and challenge the leadership position held by higher education institutions in this field (Enders and Musselin 2008; Marginson 2011). In this very same context, the crises faced by welfare systems, along with cuts to public spending, have had various effects, including the reduction of public investment in the higher education sector (De Boer, Enders and Leisyte 2007). From the mid-1980s onwards, in fact, there has been a growth in the neoliberalisation and corporatisation of academia (Olssen and Peters 2005; Rhoades and Torres 2006). Academic policies and practices have become increasingly dependent on market forces and values, while higher education institutions have been progressively characterised by management models which fit the New Public Management principles (Kogan and Teichler 2007; Lynch 2014). Such principles are oriented towards productivity, performance and excellence – principally defined in terms of the number and quality of publications produced, levels of funding obtained by both public and private bodies, and by the number of graduates ‘produced’ by universities (Teelken 2012). On top of that, higher education institutions are being constantly evaluated, validated and controlled (Enders and de Weert 2009).

In the face of the growth in the number of PhD holders and researchers, academic institutions are experiencing a decrease in their capability to absorb this new workforce and a simultaneous increase in workforce casualisation affecting academic staff, which takes place in a context of spending cuts and cost rationalisation of academic and research work (Kogan and Teichler 2007). At the same time, there has also been an increase in the demand for research competences coming from non-academic institutions and from the private sector – although this dynamic is not homogeneous among different research fields and countries (Le Feuvre 2015). It is important to consider these alternative areas in order to better understand the position of PhD holders in national labour markets. Some countries, such as Germany, Switzerland and the UK, stand out for how well they can place PhD holders in qualified positions within the non-academic labour market (Science Europe Working Group on Research Careers 2016). The situation in other countries, on the contrary (such as Italy and Portugal), demonstrate how qualified job opportunities for their PhD holders are still to be found, all too frequently, exclusively in higher education institutions. In general, the availability of qualified positions in a non-academic context strengthens the position of those approaching an academic career, and therefore dictates that universities maintain competitive working conditions compared to those from other, non-academic sectors, all in order to keep the most skilled people inside the world of academia. When working conditions available outside become better than the ones offered by a university, the latter becomes less attractive. This facilitates something akin to ‘male-defection’ with men leaving the academic world, resulting in a consequent increase in the number of women (Le Feuvre 2015). As a matter of fact, competition with non-academic fields is clearly marked by the type of discipline studied, and by gender. Non-academic research areas typically attract scientific, mathematical and engineering knowledge (Auriol, Misu and Freeman 2013) while the number of women in the private research sector is markedly low. The Innovation Union Competitiveness Report 2013 highlights that, despite the fact that 33 per cent of researchers in Europe are women, they make up just 20 per cent of researchers within industry.

The increase in competition within and between higher education systems, coupled with the marketisation of academic and research activities, have imposed the ‘academic enterprise model’. This model affects how university rankings are developed, and has consequences for the type of knowledge produced, and the way knowledge is produced. Higher education institutions are exhibiting a declining interest in developing basic, discovery-oriented research, and thus focus more attention on applied research with more practical and market-oriented concerns, especially in the scientific, engineering and technological disciplinary sectors. This happens at the expense of the already scarce resources in the humanities and social sciences (Kogan and Teichler 2007; Scott 2009). These dynamics are central in the definition of academic and scientific prestige criteria between higher education systems and institutions. In fact, the increased importance of STEM fields has led to the import of performance evaluation and scientific recognition practices, which are typical of this field, into the SSH field. Such criteria play a significant role in scientific competition on a global scale (Marginson and van der Wende 2007; Sadlak and Liu 2009), which is oriented towards the pursuit of an ideal ‘world-class university’ (Shin and Kehm 2013; Paradeise and Thoenig 2015) and towards the allocation of resources (scholarships, postdoctoral fellows, grants and awards) between fields of study (Blackmore 2015).

The internationalisation process concerning prestige and academic recognition is not, however, symmetrical across countries and different areas of the world. Indeed, it is influenced by a country’s history, culture and language, and all these factors play different roles within their national academic systems. Although higher education institutions are pushed towards conforming to international standards in terms of performance, evaluation and international reputation, the situation in many countries reveals that their parameters regarding university and research evaluation are still rooted in specific national practices when it comes to how a career is structured and how academic institutions are financed. This tension between internationalisation and specific national features produces a fragmentation of the academic market and a disadvantage for non– English speaking countries, where scientific knowledge is produced in a certain language, and where the practices concerning scientific recognition are not aligned with the ones that are widespread in natural, engineering and medical science fields (van Raan 2005; Marginson and van der Wende 2007).

Even though increased marketisation, levels of competition and standards are perceived as objective and neutral, the main transformations of the demand for academic work – and for non-academic research work, too – are driven forward by scientific, engineering and technological disciplinary sectors. This then, far from being neutral, fuels old gender inequalities in the jobs available in these sectors (Lynch 2010; O’Connor et al. 2015). The object of research, the way research is c...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of figures
• List of tables
• Notes on contributors
• Introduction
• PART I: The state of the art
• PART II: Academic and research organisations
• PART III: Early career researchers
• Conclusions
• Index