« Grab the Kids and Go ». Between Excellence and Equal Opportunities; An Ethnographic Study of Mentoring Activities Designed for Female Post-Docs

Former studies have pointed out the gendered character of academic mobility, and its role in maintaining the gender gap at the top of the academic hierarchy. According to Ackers (2003) and Leeman (2010), the difficulty for women to negotiate the incentive of being mobile with private arrangements is a contributing factor to the “leaky pipeline” phenomenon. In Switzerland, policies designed to foster female academic careers have been on the political agenda since the 90's. For more than a decade, equality offices have offered a range of mentoring events that aim to provide information and support for women in academia - a work environment that is historically both very competitive and male-centred. We aim to analyse how mentees and mentors involved in mentoring sessions address the issue of transnational mobility both at professional and private levels. We conducted an ethnographic study of various mentoring workshops at three different universities in Western Switzerland. We describe how gender is “done” and “undone” through mentoring activities, and analyse the (re)definition of what it is to be a “female professional” or to encounter “women’s issues” in the discourses and dialogues of the workshop participants. The data allow us to shed light on the ways in which mentors and mentees intertwine mobility and gender equality concerns, producing ambivalent representations of what it means to be a female academic and what it takes to be “excellent" in the academic sector.