Fragmented Meritocratisation: On Mobilisation and Demobilisation of Gender in Higher Education

In this paper, we take an interest in how gender is mobilised and de-mobilised in meritocratisation processes in higher education institutions. Building on earlier research that questions seemingly objective, neutral and meritocratic notions of academic excellence from a gender perspective, we here focus on the issue of how an organization, aware of gender structures, may still reproduce extant inequalities in its pursuit of increased meritocracy. Based on a qualitative case study in a Swedish research university, we reveal how bureaucratic initiatives to produce transparency and thereby make womens' performances visible and acknowledged in the same way as men's may at the same time not affect the discursive spaces (departments and research groups) where both inequalities and performances are produced. Two parallel meritocratisation processes are identified: one managerial process that is defined, sustained and developed in the higher echelons of the line organisation, and an excellence process at department level that reproduces traditional masculine notions of independent research groups and star scholars. The two processes are articulated by the same set of people, but invoking different discursive notions of meritocracy and gender equality depending on what discursive space they find themselves in. We thereby add to earlier research that investigates the production of gender structures and the consequences thereof in higher education.