At the heart or on the periphery: gender, (in)visibility and epistemic positioning in academia

Margaretha Järvinen, Nanna Mik-Meyer

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Abstract

This article analyses barriers for women’s careers in higher education from a theoretical perspective focusing on epistemic positioning and gendered (in)visibility. The study is based on 96 qualitative interviews with associate professors in economics, political science and sociology in Denmark. Epistemic positioning is operationalised as four distinct processes of marginalisation: reproduction of men’s privileges from cohort to cohort of academics; naturalisation of men’s collaboration with other men; appropriation where men’s research fields and methods are defined as constituting the centre of a discipline; and bounding as the discreditation of some types of research by labelling them ‘female.’ Taken together, the four processes of positioning marginalise women (as epistemic subjects) and their research (as epistemic objects).
Original languageEnglish
JournalGender and Education
ISSN0954-0253
DOIs
Publication statusE-pub ahead of print - 2024

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