Gender Politics in Academia in the Neoliberal Age

This chapter focuses on the relationship of gender and science and on gender construction processes within the domains of formal production and legitimation of knowledge, namely universities. The first part of the chapter addresses the persistence of significant gender asymmetries in these domains. In fact, despite women’s increased presence in educational spheres, evidence continues to persist of the existence of gender disparities in participation in technical and scientific educational programs, as well as of imbalance in higher status scientific careers. These asymmetries seem to be today reinforced by the emerging practices of science production and of evaluation of scientific performances, as well as by the new work arrangements in scientific organisations, due to the growing hegemony of neoliberal models. In the second part attention is focused on strategies aimed to combat gender asymmetries in scientific and academic organisations in Europe. In particular I consider the projects funded by the European Commission in recent years aimed to reduce gender inequality in science under the label of “structural changes”, by attempting to illustrate their strenghts and weaknesses. In the concluding section some of the issues arising from the consideration of European policies on gender and science are taken up and developed in light of the stimuli offered by Connell’s theory.