Abstract

This presentation will discuss the findings of a research on gender practices in recruitment and selection of full professors in the Netherlands. I will unmask some persistent myths related to recruitment and selection which are often used to explain away the under-representation of women in senior academic positions in the Netherlands. These myths are unmasked by revealing the various gender practices tied in with professorial recruitment and selection, such as gatekeeping, male networks and the construction of scientific excellence. This presentation challenges the view of an academic world where the allocation of rewards and resources is governed by the normative principles of transparency and meritocracy, and highlights the distance between the ideal ethos of science and the actuality of social interaction in daily working situations.

Marieke van den Brink is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Nijmegen School of Management in the Netherlands and is affiliated with the Institute for Gender studies at the same university. She received her Masters in Organizational Anthropology at the Free University Amsterdam (cum laude) and her PhD in Management Sciences at the Radboud University Nijmegen (cum laude). She has been a visiting scholar at the University of British Colombia in Vancouver and Northeastern University in Boston. Her research interests are in gender in organizations particularly recruitment and selection, academia, the police force, micropolitics and resistance, constructions of excellence and networking and organizational change. She is editor of the Dutch Journal of Gender Studies and an associate editor of ‘Gender Work and Organization’.