In a classic sense of pure numbers, the Leaky Pipeline points to a progressive evapora8on of women in the academic career ladder. However, as discussed in the quan8ta8ve report, this merely gives us informa8on about the “leaks” and where they are located, which points to the doctoral stage of the career, in which numbers for women are seen to be inverted for the Belgian French-speaking universi8es. This is an important informa8on in terms of where the “leak” is located and allows us to ask the ques8on, why at this stage. To recapitulate, for the Belgian case, the macro-sociological analysis (WP3, D 3.2) has shown us that the gender ques8on remains an open one, even if significant advances towards greater equality are observable. Although women are now in the majority in higher and university educa8on, with higher gradua8on rates than the boys, yet two important reserva8ons are s8ll present: firstly, access to the highest level of qualifica8on, the obtaining of doctorate, s8ll remains male in the majority; secondly, a horizontal segmenta8on between ‘male’ tracks of studies (sciences and technology) and female (human and social sciences) is s8ll reproduced. The whole labour market has also been strongly feminized, but here too classical phenomena of horizontal segmenta8on (between sectors and trades) and ver8cal (employment and responsibility levels) are present, although they are decreasing. For that mamer, an unexplained 10% gender pay gap is s8ll present. One of the important aspects of female employment in Belgium is its part 8me character. The scale of female part 8me work can par8ally be interpreted as the fruit of work/family concilia8on difficul8es, expressing the persistence of a sexual and gendered division of work in which an essen8al part of “care” is s8ll amributed to women. Such a division is also visible in how the 8me of social ac8vi8es is distributed between men and women, and within households. This kind of data however is not clearly available for the par8cular case of UCL or the two Garcia ins8tutes. However, what is notable is that as in the general case for French-speaking Universi8es, women in academic/scien8fic careers work more part 8me than men (13% vs. 6%), but these part 8me posi8ons are in lower scien8fic/academic career posts, such as assistants. The higher one climbs the ladder the more full 8me work in academic careers seems to be a condi8on. This would perhaps par8ally explain the lower number of women in professorships and ordinary professorships, and even lesser in decision- making organs and posts.
Familial policies suppor8ng work/family concilia8on are nevertheless numerous and pursue two logics: a logic of decommodifica8on via measures dealing with working hours (reduc8on, interrup8on, leave for familial reasons, etc.) and defamilializa8on measures via early childhood care and educa8on, and service-vouchers. If we observe figures of maternity and paternity leaves for the UCL and IACCHOS/ELI in par8cular, it is noteworthy that not many maternity leaves were taken for the year 2013: 4 women in SSH of which two are each postdocs and assistants and 2 are associate professors/2 in STEM of which 1 is postdoc and other is associate professor. For men, there are 4
paternity leaves taken for STEM, of which all are assistants, in other words ongoing PhDs, and none in SSH. Other types of leaves for family care were taken 2 male and 2 female for STEM and none for SSH. Such familial policies undoubtedly support employment rates among women, who are their principal users. They do not however manage to do away with the work/family contradic8on, which would moreover seem to imply basically reconsidering the organizing principles of the labour/wage society (Fusulier, Nicole- Drancourt, 2015). This argument could be supported by the conclusion of D 5.1 for WP5 for Belgium that points to the existence of a par8cular gender dimension in a professional bureaucracy that can be considered a main organiza8onal logic in UCL, whereby an important glass ceiling is produced. A professional bureaucracy of this kind of constella8on can point to an ever increasing workload transferred to individuals, which necessitates high demands of ins8tu8onal commitment, not only in terms of poli8cal or governing involvement of individuals alongside their main work of research and teaching, but also an important increase in logis8c, governance and administra8ve tasks, and of finding own funds, which research centres and facul8es are not able to supply in sufficient amounts. There is a form of entrepreneurship (self-regula8on and – funding) required on unit-and individual level, without adhering to managerialism. Parallely to this we can count in the effects of the university as a greedy ins8tu8on (Coser, 1974; del Rio Carral, Fusulier, 2013) in that research and teaching demands are today increasing in complexity and availability of the researcher/academic; in 2012 the rector of UCL remarked in the cons8tu8on of the university that the researcher/academic needs to be en8rely invested in his work. Women (and men) therefore not only have to meet high demands in research/teaching, but in addi8on also adhere to an important ins8tu8onal investment and presence in terms of integra8ng into a hyper-complex system of bureaucracy and ins8tu8onal culture. Moreover, this type of organiza8on requires a significant actual physical presence of individuals, because decisions are made in mee8ngs, delibera8ons and through a heady process of nego8a8on. There seems to be an increasing requirement of « omnipresence » in all three pillars, of which each pillar has increased in levels, demands and complexity of required personal engagement. It can be argued that this can represent important issues to work/life concilia8on or balance or having a family life, and that wan8ng to climb the career ladder also means important choices and pressures in terms of personal life. According to the findings in WP3 D 3.1 and 5.1, the problem of ar8cula8ng work and family within a gender regime maintaining a sexual division of produc8ve work and reproduc8ve work is one of the apparent causes of this downfall. In addi8on, a horizontal segmenta8on is present too, certain scien8fic disciplines such as the sciences and technology remain male bas8ons.
In terms of the models of scien8fic/academic career and the pathways of progression or climbing the ladder, the nature of how recruitment works (see D 7.1) and the organiza8onal culture point to an importance of the informal nature of dealings, interac8ons and local ways of integra8on into the system (see also above WP5 D 5.1). Firstly, for the primary stages of the career, doctoral and postdoctoral funding in French- speaking Belgian universi8es is largely dependent on external subsidies or funding bodies, such as the FNRS (Na8onal Founda8on of Research and Science) or the EC. Some limited fundings is supported by industrial sectors. There is also some PhD research funded by governmental founda8ons. All these funding paths are however subject to a
very harsh, and what can increasingly be gleaned for the case of the FNRS, very poli8cal selec8on and appointment of a massive increase in candidates (especially interna8onal or external candidates to the given university, which is hardly surprising if we consider the “interna8onal mobility and amrac8veness” discourse running in university policy lately, see WP5 5.1). However, the large numbers of ongoing PhDs, both male and female point to mul8ple possibili8es existent. Obtaining PhDs is a grey zone upon which we do not have much data apart from the CDH study data. There is an ongoing study about mo8va8on and abandonment of PhDs conducted currently at UCL by a group of psychology researchers with whom we have some collabora8ve interac8ons. It will be interes8ng to have their large-scale quan8ta8ve and qualita8ve data on how PhD’s feel in terms of comple8ng and advancing in their doctorates.
There is then aVer obtaining PhD and postdoctoral contracts, an important hurdle to overcome for young researchers to obtain or gain admission/nomina8on into permanent lectureship posts, which is the most common academic career path. Another pathway is through the appointment of a permanent FNRS researcher, affiliated to a par8cular university. However, this pathway too is very compe88ve and poli8cal oVen in nature. For the recruitment into academic posts, the figures at UCL point to as many female researchers being actually recruited as there are female candidates for the post (see D 7.1). However, at a closer look, the recruitment process is split into mul8ple complex segments: first there is a selec8on of “dossiers” of candidates (of which there are s8ll many for very few openings per year or two/three year) based on compe88ve criteria (see 7.1 report for Belgium) such as publica8ons, types of projects obtained, CV, place of educa8on and PhD, mobility etc. Then upon closer selec8on, three or four candidates are retained for a three-fold interviewing and self-presenta8on recruitment process, in which recruitment commimees (with very different dynamics and presidents) nego8ate the “ideal candidate” for what is oVen a very local nomina8on, defending the interests of being able to integrate/fit and collaborate with exis8ng teams, and being able to ensure the handling of and carrying out what are deemed all three (or four) pillars of academic work (research produc8on, teaching, ins8tu8onal engagement and perhaps also contribu8on to society). Qualita8ve and policy findings point to a recruitment and scien8fic/academic career model which favours general or compe88ve criteria and focus upon high produc8on of research and research-orientated skills in the early stages of the career ladder (Masters, doctorate, postdoc), and a sudden expected leap into local integra8on and juggling mul8ple academic spheres, of which the ins8tu8onal and self- administering engagement level becomes higher the higher the post. If we consider the age groups of persons entering and progressing (or not) up the career ladder then it cannot be disputed that this is between early twen8es and late thir8es for doctoral and postdoctoral levels, which are arguably family forming or semling more firmly into adulthood from a social point of view. The gender dimension therefore may play a more significant role as to how much women and men are willing to invest, to engage in and what they can actually perform in terms of work, produc8on, engagement etc., and how open or closed the organiza8onal culture and structures (both of which is created by all actors in the organiza8on) are towards these performances, these work/life ar8cula8ons and whether integra8on of either are at order.
However, an important further step is to understand the modali8es and sense-making (Weick, 1987) of the scien8fic/academic career in the Belgian and UCL case in order to
situate the career. This would then take us a step further from merely analysing the “leaks” and glass ceilings, to understanding the nature of scien8fic/academic work and careers as it is experienced, conceived, structured, prac8sed today (see Beaufays, Krais, 2005; Fassa et al. 2012; Fusulier, Del Rio Carral, 2012). In this report we will analyse in an interpreta8ve way the qualita8ve findings gleaned from three groups of interviewees – current postdocs, newly tenured researchers/academics, movers – by puvng them transversally into perspec8ve with the results from the quan8ta8ve report on the Leaky Pipeline (D 6.1), the results from the report on gender budge8ng (D 5.2) and those on recruitment processes and deconstruc8ng excellence. (D 7.2). However, an important point to make is that although we make an interpreta8ve analysis based on the interviews we conducted with three groups of interviewees, current postdocs, newly tenured researchers and academics and with former researchers and current researchers, who have leV UCL, we insist that the findings and interpreta8ons are in no way representa8ve for the en8re university or for all persons working at UCL. We merely try to analyse the findings in order to iden8fy and bemer understand some mechanisms interrelated to the “Leaky pipeline”, and in order to gain a more qualita8ve picture of the pipeline, the organiza8on of scien8fic/academic work and work/life interferences. So the interpreta8ve analysis is supposed to assist in understanding certain configura8ons linked to the Leaky Pipeline and have to be treated as a selec8ve and translated interpreta8on.
In the last chapter, we will present an interpreta8ve and transversal analysis of the principle results by zooming into the period of the postdoc that has been experienced by all three groups of interviewees and emerges as a most par8cular and ambivalent period full of ambigui8es, tensions and gendered implica8ons in terms of work, career, rela8onships and work/life interference for both male and female interviewees. We will look at some findings related to“Mentors/Guidance/Gatekeepers”, which looks at the high level of significance that crystallizes in the figures of mentors, of a need for guidance and the power of gatekeepers in the experience of interviewees. We will recapitulate the sensi8ve issue of ambivalentparenthood that throws a gendered picture on the results from the interviews. We will then situate the results in UCL as an organiza8on with its par8cular system of func8oning, governing and organizing, by looking at the phenomena of “omnipresence”, and by discussing the decep8ve “paradox of the sBcky floor” of teaching in scien8fic/academic early career that ques8ons the current demands. Finally, we will try to map the sense-making, career strategies and professional iden88es of interviewees in a table that describes four areas of organiza8onal regula8ons around scien8fic/academic recruitment in what can be called a loosely coupled system of university. The idea is to draw a picture of the “Leaky pipeline that is created through the demands and criteria of recruitment”, which are accounted for, enacted and enac8ng the academic ins8tu8on.