This article is concerned with the source of men's invisible advantage in the male-dominated disciplines of Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM). It is suggested that this advantage has been obscured by combining sponsorship and mentoring. The research asks: Are men or women most likely to be mentored? Is it possible to…

Excellence has become a 'hoorah' word which is widely used in higher education institutions to legitimate practices related to the recruitment/progression of staff. It can be seen as reflecting an institutionalised belief that such evaluative processes are unaffected by the social characteristics of those who work in them or their relationships…

Global scholarship has documented gender discrepancies in power in higher education institutions (HEIs) for several decades. That research is now supported by wider gender equality movements such as those concerned with unequal pay and sexual harassment. Underlying these is the under-representation of women in senior management and full…

Academic capitalism is an outcome of the interplay between neoliberalism, globalisation, markets and universities. Universities have embraced the commercialisation of knowledge, technology transfer and research funding as well as introducing performance and audit practices. Academic capitalism has become internalised as a regulatory mechanism by…

Parents' and teachers' beliefs and evaluations of young people are important. Using a feminist institutionalist perspective, and drawing on rich data from one in seven nine-year-old children in Ireland, this paper examines mothers' (who make up the overwhelming majority of primary care-givers) and teachers' perceptions of boys' and girls'…

This article is concerned with the macro-cultural ideal or institutional myth of excellence as defined and used in the evaluation of academic staff as part of an institutional logic. Such logics "prescribe what constitutes legitimate behaviour and provide taken-for-granted conceptions of what goals are appropriate and what means are…