O R I G I N A L A R T I C L E
What professors do in peer review: Interrogating
assessment practices in the recruitment of
professors in Sweden
Paula Mählck PhD
1,2|
Hanna Li Kusterer
2|
Henry Montgomery
11
Department of Culture and Soceity, Institute for Research on Migration, Ethnicity and Society (REMESO), Linköping University, Sweden
2
Department of Occupational Health Sciences and Psychology, University of Gävle, Sweden
Correspondence
Paula Mählck, PhD, Associate Professor, Department of Social and Welfare Studies, Institute for Research on Migration, Ethnicity and Society (REMESO), Linköping University. Email: paula.mahlck@edu.su.se;
paula.mahlck@liu.se
Funding information
Forskningsrådet om Hälsa, Arbetsliv och Välfärd, Grant/Award Number: 2013-1461; Gävle Högskolan
Sweden is known for its political will to gender equality.
Sweden is also a country with a strong tradition of
transpar-ency in university recruitments. In this article, the
assess-ment practices in the appointassess-ment of full professors in one
Swedish university are investigated from an intersectional
and postcolonial perspective on gender and place/space.
Using a multimethod approach to investigate written
evalu-ations of applicants, recruitment group meeting minutes
and interviews with reviewers, the results show that there
is great variation in how evaluation criteria are applied and
filled with meaning. Moreover, in more than half of the
appointment decisions the reviewers disagreed. The
inter-view results show a structural bias operating towards
researchers applying from non-Western university contexts.
At an aggregated level, national applicants have 3.88 times
greater chance to be proposed for a position and national
women applicants are the most likely to be proposed for
the position.
1 | I N T R O D U C T I O N
1Gender bias in the evaluation of academic staff (O'Connor & Hagan, 2016) during the professorship appointment process (van den Brink & Benschop, 2011) and in research grant distribution (Wennerås & Wold, 1997) is well known and researched worldwide. In a context where gender aspects are actually considered in research into peer review,
DOI: 10.1111/gwao.12500
This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
© 2020 The Authors. Gender, Work & Organization published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd
intersectional approaches to studying the evaluation of academic staff is an emerging field. Here, important research contributions focusing on intersectional place/space relations related to foreignness, subject field and language (Hearn, 2003;Śliwa & Johansson, 2014a), and internationalisation and (academic) age (Herschberg, Benschop, & van den Brink, 2018) reveal that national candidates are favored over international candidates in many settings. Taken together these prior research results highlights the importance of investigating the meanings ascribed to place/space in evaluation processes. Massey's (2005) understanding of place/space relations, as mutually constituted over time and hence impossible to separate is pivotal for the understanding of space/place in this article. We suggest that a research focus on place/space relations demonstrate the interconnectedness of the local and global, historical and contemporary, institutional and social and how these time- space/place relations may inform the non-functioning of meritocracy. The research presented here adds to previous research on inequality in evaluations by its postcolonial perspective on space/place and gender relations. A postcolonial perspective means departing from the understand-ing that the West and non-West is intrinsically connected, often in asymmetrical ways and we assume that the peer review processes we are investigating are placed in the localities of universities of the West.
The intersectional analytical design developed here is multi-layered. From this it follows that we treat gender and place/space as empirical categories under investigation, as well as theoretical perspectives informing our intersectional and postcolonial research (see also Mählck, 2016 and Mählck & Fellesson, 2016 for a similar approach). This means that we alternated between different approaches to intersectionality depending on which data we were analyzing, and we recognized that layers of data were overlapping. In particular, we focus on the links between review practices articulated in interviews with reviewers, their written evaluations and how these practices are con-nected to wider social structures in society such as meritocracy, transparency and gender equality norms in Sweden, and the outcome of these practices (which applicants are proposed for the position).
Paying attention to place/space relations means denaturalising the place/space of the university that is rec-ruiting and hence in charge of regulating how peer review should be conducted, as well as the place/space of the application, here if it is a national or an international application. We are also interested in analysing the meanings attached to Western and non-Western in peer review. This perspective distances itself from the understanding of place/space as a‘container’ that could be filled with meaning (see Massey, 1999). Instead a relational place/space perspective implies that place/space is socially and continuously produced (Ibid). From this perspective the site of the university regulating peer review, or the place/space of application becomes more complex than a geographic location only. In addition, investigating place/space relations in peer review in a Swedish academic context also means paying attention to how meritocracy is understood by peer reviewers, and in particular how the Swedish law around transparency and policy on gender equality in Swedish universities are transmitted into evaluation in practice. The law on transparency means that most documents (there are a few exceptions) produced by or sent to a public authority are public (see also§ 15, chapter 2, section 1, tryckfrihetsförordningen, 1949:105) The aim of this study is to investigate, from an intersectional and postcolonial perspective on gender and place/space, how dominant ways of understanding meritocracy, transparency and gender equality inform the link between formal and applied assess-ment practices for professor positions at one Swedish university and the outcome of these evaluations.
There are a number of ways in which dominant ways of understanding meritocracy, transparency and gender equality could inform the link between formal and applied assessment practices. In this article we have done a quan-titative mapping of the evaluation criteria stipulated in the advertisements for the post and analysed how often they are used in practice. We have also investigated how evaluation criteria are filled with meaning and if bias on the gro-unds of gender and place/space and intersections of gender and place/space exists. Previous gender research has highlighted that gender bias in how evaluation criteria are filled with meaning does exist (see for example O'Connor & Hagan, 2016). In a Swedish context, an investigation initiated and conducted by the Swedish Research Council (2015) revealed that if a woman applied for funding for a research project together with other researchers, her scientific independence was more questioned than it was for male applicants applying for funding with other researchers. In this article we particularly focus on the evaluation criterion‘estimated scientific production’ and the role of gender and place/space relations for the production of meaning of this criterion.
A main constituent of the myth of meritocracy is transparency. Recent research shows how increased transpar-ency not automatically lead to less gender bias and the language of transpartranspar-ency even may increase inequality (Özbilgin & Healy, 2004;van den Brink, Benschop & Jansen). Research from a Swedish University context (Helgesson & Sjögren, 2019) show how it was possible for reviewers to increase‘interpretative flexibility’ (2019:575) in evaluation despite increased formalisation of evaluation practices. According to the myth of meritocracy, transpar-ency would diminish bias and contribute to making the selection of the best candidates straightforward, or at least less ambiguous. In this article, transparency is investigated in terms of the link between the stipulated criteria in the adverts and how reviewers work with their evaluations in practice; if and how often the reviewers disagree in their rankings of candidates for professor positions and with the recruitment committees.
The outline of the article is as follows: first, the context of Swedish higher education, previous research and the-oretical framework are developed. Thereafter, data, sample, method and limitations with the research are described. The‘results and discussion’ section presents the results in two steps i) The evaluation process in practice and ii) The outcome of evaluations. Finally, our conclusions are presented.
1.1 | Context
Sweden is regularly placed at the top of various gender equality indexes, and is well known internationally for its strong political will and policy measures on gender equality in academia. In the late 1990s, some professorship posi-tions and junior research posiposi-tions were earmarked for women. A decade later, direct state support and economic funding were allocated to centers of gender excellence, and funds allocated for researching and challenging gender inequality in academia (SOU, 2011). An indication of the political will to transform gender distribution in universities is visible in the government-set numerical targets for each university in their recruitment of women professors, though without sanctions (for an overview of numerical targets as a technology for gender equality in Swedish uni-versities see Kovo, Stendahl, Svensson, & Johnsson, 2017). Another example is the gender mainstreaming obligation in Swedish universities' equality work (Bill, 2016/17/50 and Bill, 2015/16:135). Moreover, as mentioned previously, the Swedish Research Council has taken several measures to prevent gender inequality in the assessment of research applications (Swedish Research Council, 2015). Against this backdrop, it is reasonable to say that gender equality awareness has been heightened since the much-debated research by Wennerås and Wold (1997), con-ducted more than 20 years ago, which showed gender discrimination in research grant distribution in Sweden.
Unlike many European countries, documents related to academic recruitment processes are made public in Swe-den, and must be kept and made accessible to anyone who requests them. This regulation is associated with most Swedish universities being public authorities (so called statlig myndighet). In addition, there are no restrictions on hir-ing or promothir-ing professors from the university where they are currently employed. This is done regularly, contrary to the political will for increased internationalization and increased regional mobility of academics. Importantly, in Sweden, peer reviewers suggest which applicant they propose for the position. Usually the applicants are presented to the recruitment committee in a ranked list where the most qualified applicants are put in priority order. The recruitment committee then decides which candidate to propose for the position (sometimes more than one, in a specified rank order). Often the recruitment committee decides to interview applicants. The formal decision-making act of which applicant to employ is made by the Rector.
Despite the aforementioned gender equality interventions in Swedish academia, many directly funded by the state, women's academic careers are still lagging behind, with women representing only 29% of the profes-soriate (Universitetskanslersämbetet, 2018:5). Of the staff in teaching and research, 35% have a foreign back-ground, the majority of them being in the natural sciences and employed in non-permanent positions (Universitetskanslersämbetet 2019:11). Among female professors, 28% have a foreign background, which is a higher representation compared to the share of male professors with a foreign background– 25%. In these sta-tistics, ‘foreign background’ includes guest researchers who are only in Sweden for a short period
(Universitetskanslersämbetet, 2016:10). In this context we note that researchers with immigrant background, in particular those from Eastern Europe, Asia, Africa and South America, have a slower career progression and a higher risk of unemployment in Swedish academia (Behtoui, 2016). In addition, the first large-scale investigation of the experiences of discrimination on the grounds of skin color in Swedish academia has shown that female respondents experienced more discrimination than their male counterparts (Mählck, 2016). Here it is worth noting that there is extensive research evidence showing persistent subtle discrimination of women professors in Swedish academia (SOU, 2011:1). This resonates with international research highlighting factors relating to institutional cultures (i.e. old boys' networks) as well as factors relating to the combination of work and family life creating gendered obstacles for women professors (Britton, 2010).
2 | P R E V I O U S R E S E A R C H
This section of the article is presented in two steps,‘Gender and international/national applicants’ and ‘meritocracy and evaluation’. This division is made at a theoretical level; in practice, these fields are interlinked.
2.1 | Gender and international/national applicants
Research from Herschberg et al. (2018) shows how different values were ascribed to different foreign countries, and that tensions between different understandings of internationalisation (at macro-, meso- and micro-level) contrib-uted to producing inequality in the recruitment of junior academics who may have spent their post-doc period in the ‘wrong’ country. The right countries are exemplified by United States (US), United Kingdom (UK) or Germany, and they are considered‘right’ because of their academic culture and reputation. One of the main results of the research of Johansson andŚliwa (2014) was the sense of a norm against which the degree of ‘foreignness’ was measured, and that this norm shifted with different organisational levels with more positive connotations ascribed to internationali-zation at junior academic levels. This research result resonates with Hearn's (2003) intersectional research into peer review of a professor position in Finnish academia more than a decade ago. Hearn (2003) notes:‘The contradiction between national resistance and'internationalization’ may also be gendered, as those in position of institutional power, usually men, seek to defend their, previously more autonomous, feudal dominance’ (2003, p. 268). A study by Saxonberg and Sawyer (2006) revealed that applicants with a non-Swedish background were more negatively evalu-ated regarding teaching, compared to other criteria relating to, for example, research, in evaluation processes for faculty positions in Sweden. Importantly, pedagogical evaluations are often used to motivate the selection of a Swedish candidate. The lack of transparency of the particular, and very Swedish, way of presenting teaching merits in so-called pedagogical portfolios resulted in international applicants more often being dismissed on formal grounds (Saxonberg & Sawyer, 2006). A‘pedagogical portfolio’ is an organizational practice that takes the form of a written instruction and sometimes a manual, which outlines how academic merits in teaching should be presented in applica-tions for a position as a lecturer or professor, or for promotion to full professor. While instrucapplica-tions on how to organize a pedagogical portfolio are easily accessible in contemporary Swedish university webpages, and English versions exist, at the time of the investigation conducted by Saxonberg and Sawyer (2006) the situation was quite different, that is, the information was mainly in Swedish.
2.2 | Evaluation and meritocracy
Most universities consider themselves to be‘meritocratic’ (Scully, 2002). A common understanding of meritocracy is that it is a process whereby merits are measured and then rewarded. This can be seen as an alternative to other
bases for rewarding, for example, through nepotism or seniority. However, meritocracy is also an ideology that is used to justify the distribution of rewards (Castiolla, 2008; Liu, 2011;Śliwa & Johansson, 2014b). The underlying assumption is that a merit-based system for the allocation of rewards should increase efficiency in organizations and promote the best research ideas and researchers– in other words, it is hoped that a meritocracy should lead to a fair distribution of rewards, and to research excellence and competitive advantage for universities. However, those who are critical about meritocracy, like Scully, argue the opposite. The argument is based on the idea that meritocracy is framed and used within a discourse of political liberalism, which legitimizes the privileges of dominant groups in society and prevents redistribution. This leads to a homogenization of university faculty and research orientations and becomes a threat to critical thinking and research excellence (see also Özbilgin, 2009). Castiolla (2008) has shown that discrimination based on gender, race and nationality are embedded within the evaluation system. More specifically, the same merit does not lead to the same reward and, here, white men are gaining more reward (promotion and salary) for the same merit. These results are particularly salient in situations where there is less transparency and accountability.
From the previous research presented above the importance of critically analyzing meritocracy as well as place/space relations in evaluation processes become clear. With the exception of Saxonberg and Sawyer (2006), none of the prior studies have had an explicit postcolonial perspective on space/place rela-tions. Importantly the research by Saxonberg and Sawyer (2006) focused on evaluation at the lower ranks (PhD level) in Sweden and their research was conducted more than a decade ago. The research presented in this article focus on evaluations for professorships from an intersectional and postcolonial perspective on gender and place/space. A postcolonial perspective goes beyond the national- international dichotomy - and instead investigate the (asymmetrical) link between West and non- West and the meanings ascribed to West and non - West.
3 | T H E O R E T I C A L F R A M E W O R K
3.1 | Cultures of cloning: discrimination on the grounds of the desire for sameness
Responding to the call for intersectional gender research that extends into other theoretical frameworks (Rodriguez, Holvino, Fletcher, & Nkomo, 2016), we are inspired by the theory of ‘cultures of cloning’ (Essed, 2004), which draws on postcolonial feminist theory. Departing not from discrimination against women or Black and Minority Ethnic (BME) staff in higher education, the focus for Essed (2004) was on how exclusion is put into practice through the desire for sameness. Recruitment based on preferences for sameness has previously been researched from a gender perspective (Hearn, 1992; Husu, 2001; Kanter, 1977). Essed's (2004) contribution lies in her intersectional gender perspective: the preference for white men and Western academic values is not a coincidence but the result of intersecting historical power relations concerning gender, race and postcolonial knowledge. A postcolonial critique of evaluation practices brings to the surface relations between the center and the periphery and how they have always been connected, often in highly asymmetrical ways (McEwan, 2009). Implicit in this perspective is the importance of recognizing that these relations are embedded in particular localities. Universities and, in particular, the location of prestigious universities and their research infrastructure, are evidence of such arguments (Adriansen, Madsen, & Jensen, 2016; Livingstone, 2013). Departing from the sub-discipline of postcolonial geography, Livingstone emphasizes the importance of including place/space as an analytical category in a postcolonial critique of science:‘What passes as science is contingent on time and place: it is persistently under negotiation’ (2013, p. 13). The perspective on sameness is here applied to intersectionally investigate and theorize how evaluation is done in practice, the outcome of evaluation and if there is a bias on the grounds of gender and place/space.
4 | S A M P L E
The documents that are the focus of this article are the advertisements for professorships at one of Sweden's oldest, biggest and most prestigious universities. The reviewers' written evaluations of the applicants and recruitment committee minutes regarding the positions– a total of 50 advertised positions over a 5-year period (2009–2014) consisting of written reviews of 357 applicants (a further 31 applicants were named but lacked reviews). In the quantitative mapping, the terminology‘Swedish/international applicant’ emanates from an analysis of the educational trajectory of the applicant. In Table 1 (below), this means that, if the applicant has an educational trajectory from Sweden, they are coded as ‘applying from Sweden’. Applications from outside Sweden represented 49% of the sample and came mainly from Europe– 37%. Only a few applicants came from non-Western contexts– from Africa (n = 3), from South America (n = 2) and from Asia (n = 11). Of the applicants, 29% were women. The positions were organized into three main fields: HumSoc, STEM and Medicine.
The total number of reviewers was 115: the majority of adverts had two appointed reviewers (n = 35) and 15 adverts had three reviewers. Of the reviewers, 54 were from Sweden and 61 from another country, here 29 reviewers were from another Nordic country. None of the international reviewers were from a non-Western country.
Two pilot interviews with experienced reviewers were conducted. These proved to be of such high qual-ity that they could be included in the total sample. Thirteen individual interviews with reviewers were retrieved from the recruitment committee meeting minutes for an interview. Thus, the total number of views included in the sample is 15 (see Table 1 for an overview of the data). The aim was mainly to inter-view reinter-viewers based at Swedish universities. The reason for this was because we were particularly interested in researching how intersectional gender and place relations are managed and negotiated by reviewers who are socialized in dominant ways of understanding meritocracy, transparency and gender equal-ity policy in Sweden. In the interview sample we have strived to get a variation of gender and discipline which could provide thick descriptions the evaluation process. When no longer new information was possible to retrieve from the interviews, we stopped interviewing. The majority of the interviewed reviewers are based in Sweden (10 out of 15). The interviewed international reviewers had often collaborated with Swedish universities or had made efforts to familiarize themselves with how Swedish peer review is supposed to work. From this it follows that we found little difference between the evaluation practices of reviewers based in Sweden or elsewhere.
T A B L E 1 Sample overview
HumSoc Medicine STEM Total
Advertisments 25 17 8 50
No. of applicants 190 80 87 357
Female applicants, Swedish/international 29/22 9/7 6/5 44/34 Male applicants, Swedish/international 76/63 38/26 25/51 139/140 No. of reviewers in the advertisments 60 35 20 115 Female, Swedish/international 10/16 5/9 1/7 16/32 Male, Swedish/international 16/18 13/8 8/4 38/29 No. of interviews with peer reviewers 8 2 5 15 Female, Swedish/international 3/0 0/1 2/0 5/1 Male, Swedish/international 3/2 1/0 1/2 5/4
5 | M E T H O D
This article applies a multimethod approach (Allwood, 2004), which means that research assessment practices have been analyzed at various levels. Combining the documentary analysis of adverts, peer reviewers' written evaluations and the minutes of university recruitment committee meetings with interviews with a selection of reviewers means that different, complementary and sometimes contradictory information on the meanings ascribed to evaluation criteria and how they are applied in assessments of professorial applications can be analyzed.
Open recruitment processes (as compared to closed) in Swedish universities are organized in similar but not identical ways: discussion around advertising the post at departmental level, publication of the advert, selection of peer reviewers, peer reviewers' written evaluations, interviews with the reviewers' top ranked can-didates, recruitment committee meetings and proposal of winning candidate, and finally appointment procedure by the Rector.
The interviews were conducted online by the first author between February and July 2018, recorded and then transcribed. One was a telephone interview and not recorded according to the wishes of the interviewee. By com-bining thick descriptions of meaning making from various and differently situated reviewers (gender and field) with an analysis of the total number of written documents related to 50 adverts, this research is representative for the recruitment processes at this Swedish university during the period (2009–2014). This university is one of the oldest, biggest and most prestigious universities in Sweden.
A hermeneutic approach was applied that focused on how subjects make meaning of events in particular con-texts– that is how peer reviewers interpreted assessment practices in the recruitment of professorial positions (Kvale, 1997). This was operationalized by a thematic analysis of themes– evaluation processes in practice, interna-tionalization, gender and race discrimination in academia– and sub-themes such as the importance of geographical location, the most important/least important evaluation criteria and the meanings ascribed to them. The themes presented in the results section of this article were generated inductively. Dominant patterns– or ruptures to them – were analyzed in relation to the total number of interviews, the quantitative data patterns and the theoretical framework of this article.
The adverts revealed the attributes that were stipulated as necessary for applicants to be eligible to apply for the position and the skills that were highly valued. The outlines of the adverts were very similar. This information, combined with the results of previous research, was used to construct a mapping schedule of the different evalua-tion criteria, such as‘publications’, ‘awards’, ‘estimated scientific production’, ‘depth’ or ‘breadth’ in research etc2. The mapping schedule was used to undertake a quantitative content analysis of the written evaluations and recruitment committee meeting minutes (see also Østbye, 2004 for a detailed description of the quantitative content analysis of large numbers of texts).
The quantitative mapping of evaluation criteria merits a discussion. It is based on a mapping schedule that we have constructed, and this may have influenced our findings (i.e., did we only find what we were looking for?). How-ever, as mentioned previously, the criteria were not constructed arbitrarily but on the grounds of formal criteria men-tioned in the adverts as well as criteria highlighted as important in previous research (see Hemlin & Montgomery, 1993). Moreover, the interviews were used to triangulate the importance of the evaluation criteria that we used in the quantitative mapping. We therefore expect the quantitative mapping of application of evaluation criteria to have a high validity.
6 | L I M I T A T I O N S
The results presented here are based on an analysis of adverts, recruitment committee meeting minutes, written evaluations of professorship applications and interviews with peer reviewers, centering on their experiences and practice of evaluation processes. The applicants' academic merits have not been investigated and no conclusion is
drawn on the quality of an application or applicant. Furthermore, the article has not analyzed the applicants' ethnic-ity, instead, place/space relations is the focus. This means that patterns of migration and mobility may be under-studied; applications submitted by an academic with a foreign sounding name, who have an educational trajectory from within Sweden, are here coded as national. This does not mean that applications from academics with foreign sounding names with an educational trajectory from Sweden are not interesting to research, only that the space in an academic journal article is too limited to cover all aspects. Importantly, the number of this group was low (N = 21 and 11% of the sample), hence, it is not likely that a separate analysis of this group would have changed the overall conclusion. Applicants with Swedish sounding names who had an educational trajectory from abroad were also very few.
7 | R E S U L T S A N D D I S C U S S I O N
In the following, the results are presented in two steps, namely‘The evaluation process in practice’ and ‘The outcome
of evaluations’. Each step discusses the results under various sub-themes. Our main conclusions are found in the
con-cluding section.
7.1 | The evaluation process in practice
From an international perspective, Sweden represents both a general example of the increased pressure of accountability in peer review and a specific case– since transparency in recruitment processes is regulated by law. The quotation below, by a female reviewer in Medicine, is chosen because it represents a general pattern of how peer reviewers structure their work.
It is great fun but a lot of work. [. . .] I try to get a certain idea of their skills, competence and description, based on their CV and publication lists and of their ability to interact with society, their patents and how much funding they have and have had. [. . .] But then I enter the appli-cation itself and that is also important. And that's hard, even there; I also try to look at ‘the text of the posting’ – that the application should suit the department. And so I try to look at how this individual has written his/her application. What are they referring to? Are there good publications? Are there publications in the big journals with a high impact factor and . . . are there many new articles? So, even though I'm not 100 per cent involved in the subject area, I can form the opinion that this individual knows what it's all about. And then I also look at some of the articles that the applicant has referred to. And then I ask myself ‘Is there a new way of thinking? Or is it just the same thing they do?’ This is how I work. And then I put everything into different tables, where I give numbers to these criteria and compare them, for my own sake.
The majority of reviewers work systematically to present their evaluations in a transparent way which is in accor-dance with dominant views on how peer review should be done and the legal framework in Sweden. However, the above quotation also reveals that evaluation, in practice, includes subjective evaluations, which are less transparent. From the quotation it also becomes clear that the subjective elements of evaluation are framed within the language of‘objective’ and numerical calculations, which resonates with the legal demands for transparency in Sweden. In addition, the quotation also indicates how this practice is linked to the peer reviewer's own perception of excellence and assessment practices.
7.2 | Conceptions of the role of gender
The following quotations reveal how the peer reviewers perceive the role of gender in evaluation processes. This is pertinent considering the unique state support that gender equality in academia has had in Sweden for the past two decades (Bill, 2016/17:50).
In our faculty, when the recruitment committees are meeting to discuss the evaluations, there is an obligatory gender equality point on the agenda; here we must discuss gender in relation to the evalu-ation of the applicevalu-ation. We must make sure that there has been no gender bias (Female reviewer, HumSoc).
In my experience, our university is making a real effort to promote recruitment on the grounds of competence. We have been instructed how to interview candidates so that we will not construct gen-der bias. We have also been instructed to make sure that both women and men are represented in the group of top-ranked candidates. (Male reviewer, STEM).
In the cases I can recall, the experts have really tried to evaluate women and the women were at least as good or better [than the men]. Absolutely no negative assessment of women has ever occurred in my experience (Female reviewer, Medicine).
From these quotations and the overall interview sample, it becomes clear that a dominant discourse on gender equality has been institutionalized within university recruitment committees, and that this has been noticed by the peer reviewers. However, when discussing gender relations in academia overall, an equally dominant pattern emerges; gender inequality exists– however, in more subtle ways.
The way to the professoriate is more difficult for women, the different career steps are harder for women […]. For example, we know that women are given more teaching and administrative assign-ments. I mean, the whole image of the excellent researcher is gendered. That is for sure. But of course, individual women can achieve this (Female reviewer, STEM).
In the quotation above, the peer reviewer points to the importance of processes taking place on career paths before the recruitment process for professorships and in everyday gendered interactions in universities– such as the possibility of doing research. Closely related to the theme of how everyday work life is gendered are sub-themes that hint at appli-cants' gendered inclusion or exclusion in networks, access to information and, more recently, the increased competition for funding and permanent posts, which contributes to fewer women in professorial positions. This resonates with pre-vious research on gender inequality in the globalized academy (Leathwood & Read, 2009; Mählck, 2013). There were also signs that could be interpreted as fatigue in gender equality work in Swedish higher education, as expressed here by a female peer reviewer in the medical sciences– ‘20 or 30 years ago there used to be a negative bias towards women, but not now’ – or, as a male peer reviewer from the social sciences put it: ‘I don't see the point of including a gender perspective in recruitment studies, or into the perception of excellence; it is not necessary, not anymore’.
8 | C O N C E P T I O N S O F T H E R O L E O F P L A C E / S P A C E
The following quotations demonstrate how peer reviewers perceive the role of place/space in the review process. The quotations are chosen because they reveal a pattern in the interviews around the intersectional complexities related to the location of where the merit is constructed.
One is, so to say, always judged fairly positively if one has been educated in Western Europe or the United States or Australia. If they have all their education in another part of the world, it is still difficult for them to get through. And this also applies to, for example, very developed cities, such as Singapore […] I think that non-Europeans, or non-Americans, are easily excluded here (Female reviewer, Medicine).
In peer review it is important that you can understand the context. So, if the context is perhaps Cana-dian, that would be fine. But an African context or a Middle East context? Then it becomes difficult (Male reviewer, HumSoc).
These quotations highlight an awareness of the importance of place/space, in particular a structural bias towards researchers who apply from countries in non-Western areas. From these quotations and the overall sample, it becomes clear that the reviewers highlight negative substructures immersed in how evaluation is conducted in prac-tice, which operates against international applicants from non-Western contexts. In addition, we note from analyzing the total interviews, that the interviewed reviewers generally perceive that the review process of applications sent from Western contexts are free from bias. A specific statement from the first quote (above) is an example of this: ‘One is, so to say, always judged fairly positively if one has been educated in Western Europe or the United States or Australia’. One possible interpretation of this result is that there exists an assumption of a perceived similarity among universities in the West (Swedish universities being part of this group) and Swedish evaluation system as free from bias on the grounds of place/space.
8.1 | Conceptions of intersectional gender and place/space relations
It is more difficult for women to enter research networks. Most research networks are led by men. […] And I think it is even harder for researchers with an international background, particularly for women with an international background, to enter research networks (Female reviewer, Medicine).
The quotation above is one of very few in the interviews that explicitly mentions intersectional barriers related to gender and place/Space. Interestingly, the quotation above refers to female applicants who have a Western European background and are trying to enter Swedish research networks. This indicates that it may not be enough to have a Western international background to enter Swedish networks (see also Hearn, 2003, for research in a Finn-ish context).
Even though there are very few explicit mentions of intersections of gender and place/space in the interviews, we suggest that gender and place/space relations are mutually present on a substructural level. Let us expand on this line of thought: under the section describing conceptions of gender, we note that gender inequality is mainly dis-cussed in relation to barriers encountered by female applicants; however, with the exception of the quotation above, the context for the application is assumed to be Swedish. Moreover, under the section‘Conceptions of the role of place/Space’ we note that non-Western researchers are mainly coded as ‘gender-neutral’. Here we know, from the perspective of feminist philosophy, that, throughout history, the intellectual has been coded as gender-neutral and implicitly as male (see Lloyd, 1993).
From the perspective of cultures of cloning and the desire for sameness, these results resonate with the institu-tional silence surrounding internainstitu-tional applicants. The peer reviewers in this research had not been given instruc-tions on how to evaluate international applicants and, in particular, researchers who applied from non-Western contexts. Hence, the applicants are assessed as if they are applying from a Swedish context. From the interviews we note that there was an absence of intersectional gender equality policy– academic women are supposed to be Swedish. These results are in accordance with how gender equality and internationalization are outlined in Swedish
national research policy (Bill, 2016:17:50), that is, they are treated as separate policy arenas where academic women never are racialized and international researchers never are gendered. Also, researchers funded by development aid are not included in the framework of internationalization of Swedish higher education and research (Mählck, 2017). The following section will continue unfolding the evaluation process in practice, focusing specifically on meanings ascribed to evaluation criteria.
8.2 | Meanings attached to
‘estimated scientific production’
The following quotations will focus on the meanings attached to the criterion‘estimated scientific production’. The criterion is chosen because it is ascribed importance in the interviews. The criterion was also found to be central in the adverts and was frequently used in the written evaluations (69% frequency, see below under the section‘The outcome of evaluations’).
According to the adverts, there is a gold standard that the winning candidates must live up to. A main constituent of this standard is the form and content of their scientific productivity. The general trend in the interviews is to describe the‘estimated scientific production’ as a complex phenomenon, which includes not only the number of publications but also where the research is published, the location of the journal, the university from which the applicant is applying, and citations. The following interview quotes are chosen because they represent a general pattern of how the criterion‘estimated scientific production’ is filled with meaning.
We are looking for people who come from highly productive research milieus and, here, university ranking becomes important. We don't have many highly ranked universities in Africa. These are in the US, Europe and Asia [… ] The system reproduces itself, so to say. The good research milieus, which have a good citation rate, become good because their researchers are good in a bibliometric sense. […] It is really difficult to apply for a professorship coming from ‘the university of nowhere’. […] You have to write in English; other languages don't exist in our field (Male reviewer, STEM).
Well, it may be that there is a really good article from a journal located in, let's say, Pakistan, a journal I don't recognize, but I would still be hesitant as we simply don't trust their way of doing peer review (Female reviewer, Medicine).
Well, if the research is only published in a journal in, let's say, Ethiopia, I would read it and try to eval-uate the research, to see what they have actually done, but I would wonder why they have not tried to publish it in another [English-speaking] journal, and tried to lift the research to a higher level, tried to generalize the research question, so to say (Female reviewer, HumSoc).
The quotations point to the hierarchical and postcolonial knowledge relations that are inherent in how ‘estimated scientific production’ is filled with meaning, in particular in relation to factors governing how competence is perceived. A specific statement‘we simply don't trust their way of doing peer review’ – and what is considered to be a general research question –‘I would wonder why they have not tried to publish it in another [English-speaking] journal, and tried to lift the research to a higher level, tried to generalize the research question, so to say’. We here argue that this result contributes to and complements a previous critique by van den Brink and Benschop (2011), who highlighted the fact that the substructure of publications is gendered. In particular, many women have fewer publications but, instead, have other merits, which are less valued. As we can see, the meaning-making processes around‘estimated scientific production’ do not reveal explicitly gendered patterns.
8.3 | The outcome of evaluations
In the following, the second part of the results and discussion section takes place, here starting with analyzing disagreements.
8.4 | Disagreements in evaluation
The data on the coding of the extent to which the reviewers agreed or disagreed with other peer reviewers con-cerning the ranking of the applicants are presented in Table 2. In more than half of the appointment decisions (53%), when there was more than one applicant, the reviewers disagreed in some respect (i.e., concerning the first or sec-ond position or with the recruitment committee). The degree of disagreement does not differ across subject areas3.
Chi-Square tests of frequency of disagreement versus frequency of agreement by gender or by place/space (national/international applicant) showed that none of these factors were significantly related to the degree of dis-agreement regarding ranking in first position (for which we had the relevant data). The tests were restricted to adverts where there were more than one applicant and where the applicants were ranked (N = 39), and also excluded one advert where one man and one woman were proposed for professorship.
What were the areas of disagreement? Probing the evaluation documents, we found that disagreement was found widely, and reviewers could disagree on criteria that were numerical– e.g. how many publications an applicant had– and evaluative, e.g. if the applicant had research experience within the scientific area of the position. The reviewers' disagreements on whether or not an applicant had fulfilled a criterion were often entangled with other criteria in the written evaluations. This entanglement merits an example: an application can be attributed less value as regards‘estimated scientific production’ because the topic of the publications is not considered relevant for the position. The following quotations offer one example of a disagreement concerning whether the applicant has publi-shed within the core area of the position. The reason why‘core area’ is exemplified here is because disagreements around the term are clearly described, that is, are less entangled with other criteria in the written evaluations. This clarity was found across scientific disciplines.‘Applicant X' refers to the same applicant whose relation to the core area is evaluated differently by different reviewers.
Applicant X is, because of his scientific qualifications in the area, very well equipped for the position. […] He is therefore recommended for the top position on the ranking list (Reviewer 2, HumSoc).
T A B L E 2 Frequency and percentage of agreement/disagreement by subject area among and between reviewers and the recruitment committee over the ranking of applicants
Subject area Agree Disagree on first position Disagree on second position Agree on first position; disagree with the recruitment
committee Only one applicant Total
N % N % N % N % N % N %
HumSoc 12 57 9 36 2 8 – 2 8 25 100
Medicine 7 41 3 18 4 24 1 6 2 12 17 100
STEM 1 17 3 50 1 17 – 1 17 6 100
Total 20 42 15 31 7 15 1 2 5 10 48 100
Note. Two advertisments were excluded because no ranking of applicants was made. A total of four positions, including
Applicant X is interdisciplinarily active in the field. […] He has been pedagogically active in the field. […] His publication record is narrow and his publications center around the pedagogics of the field (Reviewers 1 and 3, HumSoc).
While the first reviewer ranked Applicant X, a male applying from Sweden, as the first name on the list, Applicant X was not ranked in the top group by the other reviewers. Despite the fact that Applicant X had a strong presence in the written evaluations and on the ranking lists of reviewer 2. In the recruitment committee meeting minutes Appli-cant X disappears and was not called for interview.
This example supports the results presented in Table 2, which shows the level of disagreement among the reviewers, and between the reviewers and university recruitment committees regarding the ranking of applicants. The results also resonate with the role of subjectivity displayed in the interviews when the reviewers recalled how they organized their reviews in practice.
8.5 | Application of criteria in written evaluations
Despite the adverts showing little variation in the recommended evaluation criteria, there was a big difference in how often these were used in the written evaluations. Here pedagogical merit was the most common (77%), followed by research grants (72%), estimated scientific production (69%), closeness to the core area as described in the advert (56%), experience as a research leader (43%), scientific breadth (39%), evaluation of applicants' PhD-supervisor experience (32%), co-operativeness (29%), scientific depth (22%), independence (22%) and scien-tific awards (13%). Importantly, these figures may also reflect disciplinary differences in how peer review is carried out in practice.
8.6 | Gender, national and international among the proposed applicants
Table 3 shows how the extent to which the outcome of the recruitment committees' decisions to propose or not to propose an applicant for the position differed depending upon the applicants' group belongingness in terms of gen-der and place/space (national/international applicant).
A logistic regression analysis of negative/positive outcome decision as a function of gender and place/space (national/international) revealed that place/space was significantly related (p < .05) to the outcome of the appoint-ment decision, odds ratio (OR) = 3.88, p < .001. This means that a national applicant in these data has a 3.88 times greater chance to be proposed for a professorship as compared to an international applicant. Although there is no statistically significant relationship between gender and negative/positive outcome decision, it is noteworthy that
T A B L E 3 Frequency and percentage of applicants proposed or not proposed for a professorship by applicants' group belongingness
Decision Swedish women International women Swedish men International men Total
No. % No. % No. % No. % No. %
Proposed 13 30 1 3 25 18 10 7 49 14
Not proposed 31 70 33 97 112 82 130 93 306 84 Total 44 100 34 100 137 100 140 100 355 100
Note. Two applicants were excluded because they withdrew their applications before the recruitment committees' decisions.
only one international woman out of 34 was proposed for professorship as compared to 10 out of 140 international men (marginally significant, p = .078, according to Chi-Square test).
In the quantitative sample (Table 3) there were very few applicants from non-Western contexts and very few international applicants proposed for a position. An intersectional analysis of place/space shows that there is a gap between the results from the qualitative and quantitative data. Although there are very few international applicants proposed for a position, the interviews with reviewers mainly highlight an awareness of a bias against non-Western contexts, and the reviewers did not problematize the evaluation of international applications from Western contexts. In this aspect these results make a contribution to the theory of discrimination on the ground of sameness, which has focused on race or gender but not particularly researched complexities and nuances around place/space relations.
9 | C O N C L U S I O N S
This article builds on the important gender critique of assessment practices in previous research, which has shown a negative bias against female academics (O'Connor & Hagan, 2016; van den Brink & Benschop, 2011). The research presented here makes a contribution to research into inequality in evaluations through its intersectional and postcolonial perspective on gender and place/space.
Our first main result shows that very few international applicants, in particular international women, are pro-posed for a position. Table 3 shows that national applicants have 3.88 times greater chance to be propro-posed for a position. While we cannot conclude that this is the result of discrimination, the interviews highlight two substruc-tures of inequality; one substructure that is immersed in the evaluation system and that works against international applicants from non-Western contexts and one institutional substructure that work against women applicants (in early stages of women's careers). Importantly, our quantitative results show that very few academics from West-ern contexts are proposed for a professorship position. Taken together, the quantitative and qualitative results open for the possibility that bias in evaluation may exist also against international scholars from Western contexts outside of Sweden. From this follows our first conclusion; this article makes a theoretical contribution by introducing the concepts of gender and place/space from an intersectional and postcolonial perspective. Our analysis moves beyond gender and a national-international dichotomy and instead point at how postcolonial inequality is immersed into the evaluation process. Universities in the West have since the colonial period gained from the uneven distribution of work and capital from non-Western societies. Our results demonstrate how Western Universities still today gain from representing a standard of‘good science’ against which all institutions and researchers are measured in evalua-tion processes. Gender equality work is instituevalua-tionalized in this university's recruitments however women are assumed to be Swedish and international researchers are non-gendered.
Our postcolonial and intersectional critique of inequality in evaluation extends to investigating the myth of meri-tocracy, in particular transparency in evaluation processes in this Swedish university. Our second main result reso-nate with prior research (see Helgesson & Sjögren, 2019; Özbilgin & Healy, 2004; van den Brink, Benschop, & Jansen, 2010) and highlight a gap between dominant views of how meritocracy and transparency should work and the role of subjectivity in peer review in practice. This gap is mirrored in the quantitative mapping: here we identify a mismatch between how evaluation criteria are displayed in adverts and the variation in how evaluation criteria are used in practice. In addition, we find a high level of disagreement as regards the ranking of the first position indicat-ing that a high demand on transparency do not automatically reduce disagreements. Our analysis of disagreements on what constitutes a‘core area’ merits a reflection on how disagreements are displayed – or not in the recruitment committee minutes. Our example on disagreement around core area was not clearly outlined in the minutes. Here we suggest that the minutes from recruitment committee meetings, a closed room where the actual decision-making on which applicant that will be suggested for the position is made, needs more attention in future research. In the context of Swedish higher education, where transparency is regulated by law, these results are interesting since they
raise questions on how transparent evaluation processes in Swedish universities really are? From this follows our second conclusion: the result presented above point at the importance of placing a critique of transparency in the particularities of Western academic values and the specific place/space of the university where the position is being advertised. The practical implications of this conclusion are; the presence of reviewers from non-Western contexts and/or reviewers which are knowledge about content and conditions for research in non- Western contexts, as var-ied as these may be, need to be increased; the representation of members of university recruitment committees need be scrutinised so that non- western researchers and perspectives are represented. Moreover, circulation of members in recruitment committees, so that power is not concentrated to a few individuals over long periods of time is underlined.
O R C I D
Paula Mählck https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4234-4007
Hanna Li Kusterer https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8537-667X
E N D N O T E S
1This project has been funded by FORTE, Swedish Research Council for Health, Working Life and Welfare (Dnr
2013–1,461) and University of Gävle. The first author and corresponding author and has contributed with 70% to this article. Second author has contributed with 20% to this article. Third author has contributed with 10% to this article.
2
We plan to present a more detailed analysis of the quantitative mapping in a forthcoming article.
3This was a non-significant outcome (p > .05) of a Chi-Square test on the distribution level of agreement/disagreement by
subject area, Chi-Square (6) = 6.61, p = .36.
R E F E R E N C E S
Adriansen, H. K., Madsen, L. M., & Jensen, S. (Eds.) (2016). Higher education and capacity building in Africa: The geography and
power of knowledge under changing conditions. London and New York: Routledge.
Allwood, C. M. (2004). Perspektiv på den kvalitativa idétraditionen [Perspectives on the qualitative tradition of ideas]. In C. M. Allwood (Ed.), Perspektiv på kvalitativ metod [perspectives on qualitative methods] (pp. 9–35). Lund: Studentlitteratur.
Behtoui, A. (2016). ‘Främlingen’ bland svensk ‘homo academicus’ [‘The stranger’ among Swedish ‘homo academicus’].
Sociologisk Forskning, 54, 91–109. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10734-018-0266-x
Bill. (2015/16:135) Ett övergripande ramverk för aktiva åtgärder i syfte att främja lika rättigheter och möjligheter [Bill, A framework for equal rights and possibilities] Retrived from https://www.regeringen.se/rattsliga-dokument/proposition/ 2016/03/prop.-201516135/
Bill. (2016/17/50) Kunskap i samverkan– för samhällets utmaningar och stärkt konkurrenskraft. [Research Bill, Knowledge in Societal Impact – for Society's Challenges and Strengthening Competitiveness]. Retrieved from: https://www. regeringen.se/rattsliga-dokument/proposition/2016/11/prop.-20161750/
Britton, M. (2010) "Engendering the university through policy and practice: Barriers to promotion to full professor for women in the science, engineering, and math disciplines." GenderChange in Academia. VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften.
Castiolla, E. J. (2008). Gender, race and meritocracy in organizational careers. American Journal of Sociology, 113, 1479–1526. https://doi.org/10.1086/588738
Essed, P. (2004). Cloning amongst professors: Normativities and imagined homogeneities. Nora, 2, 112–122. https://doi. org/10.1080/08038740410004588
Hearn, J. (1992). Men in the public eye. The construction and deconstruction of public men and public patriarchies. London and New York: Routledge.
Hearn, J. (2003). Organization violations in practice: a case study in a university setting. Culture and Organization, 9, 253–273.
Helgesson, K. S., & Sjögren, E. (2019). No finish line: How formalization of academic assessment can undermine clarity and increase secrecy. Gender, Work and Organization, 26(4), 558–581.
Hemlin, P., & Montgomery, H. (1993). Peer judgement of scientific quality: A cross-disciplinary document analysis of profes-sorship candidates. Science Studies, 1, 19–27.
Herschberg, C., Benschop, Y., & van den Brink, M. (2018). Selecting early-career researchers: the influence of discourses of internationalization and excellence on formal and applied selection criteria in academia. Higher Education, 76, 807–825. Husu, L. (2001). Sexism, support and survival in academia: Academic women and hidden discrimination in Finland. Helsinki:
Uni-versity of Helsinki, Department of Psychology.
Johansson, M., &Śliwa, M. (2014). Gender, foreignness and academia: An intersectional analysis of the experiences of for-eign women academics in UK business schools. Gender, Work and Organization, 21(1), 18–36.
Kanter, R. M. (1977). Men and women of the corporation. New York: Basic Books.
Kovo, S., Stendahl, S., Svensson, E. M., & Johnsson, J. (2017). Utvärdering av Samhällsvetenskapliga fakultetens genomförande av Göteborgs universitets jämställdhetssatsning för befordran av kvinnliga professorer. Juridiska Institutionen, Göterborg Universitet augusti 2017 [Evaluation of department of social sciences Göteborg University. Gender equality interventions for the promotion of Women professors] Retrived from: https://samfak.gu.se/ digitalAssets/1685/1685126_professorer-samfak-171113_final.doc
Kvale, S. (1997). Den kvalitativa forskningsintervjun. [the qualitative research interveiw]. Lund: Studentlitteratur.
Leathwood, C., & Read, B. (2009). Gender and the changing face of higher education: A feminized future? Milton Keynes: Open University Press.
Liu, A. (2011). Unraveling the myth of meritocracy within the context of US higher education. Higher Education, 6, 383–397. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10734-010-9394-7
Livingstone, D. L. (2013). Putting science in its place. Geographies of scientific knowledge. Chicago, Il: University of Chicago Press.
Lloyd, G. (1993). A man of reason. Male and female in western philosophy. New York: Routledge.
Mählck, P. (2013). Academic women with migrant background in the global knowledge economy. Bodies, hierarchies and resistance. Women's Studies International Forum, 36, 65–74.
Mählck, P. (2016). Academics on the move? Gender, race and place in transnational academic mobility. Nordic Journal of
Studies in Educational Policy, 2016(2–3), 29784, 1–12. https://doi.org/10.3402/nstep.v2.29784
Mählck, P. (2017). A'int I a woman ?/är inte jag en forskare? Tidskrift för genusvetenskap. Journal for Gender Studies, 38, 55–65.
Mä, P., & Fellesson, M. (2016). Capacity-building, internationalisation or postcolonial education? Space and place in development-aid-funded PhD training. Education Comparée, 15, 97–118.
Massey, D. (2005). For space (1–222). London: Sage.
Massey, D. (1999). Spaces of politics. In D. Massey, J. Allen, & P. Sarre (Eds.), Human geography today (pp. 279–294). Cambridge: Polity Press.
McEwan, C. (2009). Postcolonialism and development. London: Routledge.
O'Connor, P., & Hagan, C. (2016). Excellence in university academic staff evaluation: A problematic reality? Studies in Higher
Education, 41, 1943–1957. https://doi.org/10.1080/03075079.2014.1000292
Østbye, H. (2004). Metodbok för medievetenskap. Malmö: Liber ekonomi.
Özbilgin, M. F. (2009). From journal rankings to making sense of the world. Academy of Management Learning & Education, 8, 113–121. https://doi.org/10.5465/amle.2009.37012185
Özbilgin, M. F., & Healy, H. (2004). The gendered nature of career development of university professors: The case of Turkey.
Journal of Vocational Behavior, 64(2), 358–371.
Rodriguez, J. K., Holvino, E., Fletcher, J. K., & Nkomo, S. (2016). The Theory and Praxis of Intersectionality in Work and Orga-nisations: Where Do We Go From Here? Gender, Work and Organization, 23, 201–222.
Saxonberg, S., & Sawyer, L. (2006). Uteslutningsmekanismer och etnisk reproduktion inom Akademin Utbildningens dilemma: Demokratiska ideal och andrafierande praxis. Stockholm: Statens Offentliga Utredningar SOU [Governement Report Series] 2006:40.
Scully, M. A. (2002). Confronting errors in the meritocracy. Organization, 9, 396–401. https://doi.org/10.1177/ 135050840293004
Śliwa, M., & Johansson, M. (2014a). How non-native English-speaking staff are evaluated in linguistically diverse organiza-tions: A sociolinguistic perspective. Journal of International Business Studies, 45, 1133–1151.
Śliwa, M., & Johansson, M. (2014b). The discourse of meritocracy contested/reproduced: Foreign women academics in UK business schools. Organization, 21, 821–843.
SOU. (2011:1) Svart på vitt om jämställdhet i Akademin. Betänkande av delegationen för jämställdhet i högskolan. [Guvernement report 2011:1 Gender Equity in the Academy in black and white] Stockholm, Elanders Tryck AB Swedish Research Council. (2015). En jämställd process: En kvalitativ undersökning av bedömningen av
forskningsbidragsansökningar 2014 [gender equality in evaluation? A qualitative investigation of evaluation in research grant applications]. Stockholm: Swedish Research Council.
Universitetskanslersämbetet årsrapport. (2016:10). [Swedens' higher Education Authority, Yearbook 2016] Univer-sitetskanserslämbetet, Växjö. Retrieved from: https://www.uka.se/download/18.12f25798156a345894e4ac9/ 1487841867894/arsrapport2016.pdf
Universitetskanslersämbetet årsrapport. (2018:5). [Swedens' higher Education Authority, Yearbook 2018] Universitetskanslersämbetet, växjö. Retrived from: https://www.uka.se/download/18.661e864c1639ebc31e7750/ 1556787265197/rapport-2018-05-30-arsrapport-2018.pdf
Universitetskanslersämbetet årsrapport. (2019:11). [Swedens' higher Education Authority, Yearbook 2019] Univer-sitetskanserslämbetet, Växjö. Retrieved from: https://www.uka.se/digitala-dokument/arsrapport-2019.html
van den Brink, M., & Benschop, Y. (2011). Gender practices in the construction of academic excellence: Sheep with five legs.
Gender, Work and Organisation, 19, 507–524. https://doi.org/10.1177/1350508411414293
van den Brink, M., Benschop, Y., & Jansen, W. (2010). Transparency in academic recruitment: a Problematic tool for gender equality? Organization Studies, 31, 1459–1483. https://doi.org/10.1177/0170840610380812
Wennerås, C., & Wold, A. (1997). Nepotism and sexism in peer review. Nature, 387, 341–343. https://doi.org/10.1038/ 387341a0
A U T H O R B I O G R A P H I E S
Paula Mählck is Associate Professor of Sociology of Migration and Ethnicity at the University of Linköping. She
also holds a position as a senior researcher and lecturer at Stockholm University, department of Education. Her research focuses on inequality based on gender, race and postcolonial relations in higher education and in work life in general. She has done research in Sweden and international comparative research in South Africa, Mozam-bique and Tanzania.
Hanna Li Kusterer is a lecturer at the department of Occupational Health Sciences and Psychology at Gävle
Uni-versity. Her research is about gender stereotypes of managers, gender relations in higher education and more recently into employability of migrants in Sweden.
Henry Montgomery is a professor emeritus at the department of Occupational Health Sciences, Gävle
Univer-sity. He has published extensively in cognitive psychology, such as decision making processes and values.
How to cite this article: Mählck P, Kusterer HL, Montgomery H. What professors do in peer review:
Interrogating assessment practices in the recruitment of professors in Sweden. Gender Work Organ. 2020; 1–17.https://doi.org/10.1111/gwao.12500
