Do globalization and internationalization influence the gender composition of academia? And if so, how? What is the effect of internationalization when it comes to research priorities and preferences between and within different disciplines, and how is this influencing the gender composition among academic staff in the research- and higher education institutions (RHE) in Norway? And does gender influence the degree of internationalization within a research field? These are some of the questions that the research project Gender, citizenship and academic power (GAP) will try to answer. The project speaks to knowledge gaps pertaining to three tendencies in today’s Norwegian RHE-sector:
- Recruitment and career development within the RHE-sector has long been subject to national, and often local, practices and preferences, as well as formal and informal rules and regulations. This has led to a high degree of internal recruitment in the sector, and may explain the significant male dominance at the top-level in Norwegian academia: in a country otherwise characterized by gender equality, male professors have been able to recruit and consolidate the careers of homegrown candidates resembling themselves, both in terms of discipline/tradition and gender. This practice is now challenged due to the rising prevalence of recruitment of academics from outside Norway. Internationalization and globalization could therefore be expected to influence the gender composition of the academic staff in the institutions in the RHE-sector. The question is whether and how this is actually happening.
- An academic career is often idealized as a meritocratic, straight line towards a specific target –the professorship – passing a few stations underway – from PhD candidate to post-doc, through to associate professor (førsteamanuensis). Yet we still do not know much about the effects of organizational cultures and processes on gender balance in academic career trajectories and practices, and we know even less about how foreign female and male academics experience and navigate organizational cultures, work conditions, and academic career conditions in Norwegian RHE-institutions.
- In academia both in Norway and globally, there is a gender imbalance horizontally – with pronounced underrepresentation of women in STEM disciplines (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) – and vertically, with fewer women in top (professorial) positions. But we lack knowledge on how internationalization and academic mobility influence these two forms of gender imbalance.
