Crises and Precarity in Academia: Gendered Career Impacts and Institutional Responses

Abstract

This panel examines the policy challenges faced by higher education institutions (HEIs) in the context of neoliberal reforms, focusing on the gendered impact of various crises. It adopts a feminist perspective to analyze the conflicting demands from stakeholders like state authorities, funders, students, the economy, and society. The central question is the gendered consequences of these crises and the gendered (policy) responses of higher education leadership. Marketization of higher education has led to a crisis, exacerbated by increasing student numbers and heightened expectations for the value of education and research for individuals and societies. The COVID-19 pandemic further intensified this crisis, highlighting the role of universities in addressing societal challenges, demonstrating that "crisis" in higher education can mean different things and encompass various situations. A crisis necessitates rethinking and adapting existing structures and processes, either due to sudden events or ongoing developments. The perception of crisis is seen as a socially constructed process, which provides both opportunities to strengthen gender equality in HEI but also risks of perpetuating and even exacerbating gendered bias through policy responses by academic and political institutions. The presentations offer different perspectives on the multiple challenges including right-wing populist attacks against gender equity and diversity efforts, the COVID-19 pandemic, and the role of higher education management during crises, particularly women in leadership roles and gendered practices in decision-making and policy implications, highlighting the multilevel and multifaceted character of crises. They adopt an intersectional approach to gender, interpreting gender equality as a multidimensional construct that aims for institutional and cultural change and challenges androcentric power relations, in a variety of liberal and illiberal national contexts including the UK, India, Ireland, Portugal, Turkey, and the United States.

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