Inequalities and the Paradigm of Excellence in Academia

"The idea of excellence not only dominates academic discourse but is used to justify the distribution of (scarce) resources and power in science and institutions of higher education. Thus, we need to better understand the relationship between gender equality and excellence. The contributions of this volume illustrate convincingly from various angles how excellence is a gendered concept, how practices of measuring excellence can be biased, and how the discourses of excellence shapes the careers of women. Thus, this book will inspire new thinking and new practices!
This book is a must-read for anyone interested in excellence & meritocracy & gender equality in science and academia!"

Kathrin Zippel, Professor of Sociology, Northeastern University, Boston, USA

"Inequalities and the Paradigm of Excellence in Academia, edited byFiona Jenkins, Barbara Hoenig, Susanne Weber and Andrea Wolffram, interrogates the paradigm of excellence and its rise with the entrepreneurial university to pose epistemological questions of social responsibility and justice in relation to gender equality. The discourses of gendered equality are examined from a variety of perspectives using critical sociology, discourse analysis, and feminist institutional theory. This book is an important contribution to understanding the value of academic work by women in a post-COVID world."

Michael A. Peters, Distinguished Professor, Faculty of Education, Beijing Normal University, China

"Higher education is committed to excellence. Yet academic relationships are defined by persistent inequalities, not least between men and women. This substantial volume brings together empirically grounded and theoretically informed perspectives on the difficult relationship between excellence and equality. This is a must-read for anybody who wants to critically account for academia as a gendered social world today."

Johannes Angermuller, Professor of Discourse, Languages and Applied Linguistiscs at Open University (Milton Keynes, UK)

"This is a brilliant collection. The struggle for gender justice takes us into the heart of academia and the basic truth that its customary systems and calibrations, neutral in form, have been fashioned for some at the expense of others. Women who push against the dead weight of academic structure and win through open up the universities for all who are excluded and point the way towards the regime of inclusion and epistemic diversity that we need so very much."

Simon Marginson, Professor of Higher Education, University of Oxford and Director ESRC/OFSRE Centre for Global Higher Education

"This excellent volume shows that the socially constructed standard of 'excellence' still is charged with gender-specific aspects. In competitions for excellence, the norms of meritocracy and of gender equality still play out in gender-structured games for recognition. This compilation of empirical studies of Europe´s academia shows, that in arenas of excellence production, a gender habitus still is at work. The cases provided clearly show the ambivalences and habitually gender-structured games in the battlefield of excellence."

Prof. Dr. Tanja Paulitz, Institut für Soziologie, Technische Universität Darmstadt, Germany