WP5: Criteria of Excellence

Excellence is considered as the most important factor in hiring processes for professorships as well as in the working environment of researchers.

The objectives of WP5 are:

• to make visible the perceptions of excellence in hiring processes in science and engineering research institutions and how they affect gender imbalance

• to develop variables that make the concept of excellence objective and measurable in a gender-sensitive way

• to train members of the selection committees for professorships in their ability to make reliable, unprejudiced and therefore gender-sensitive judgements on the excellence of the applicants for a professorship.

• to make implicit criteria of excellence in the working environment of researchers

• to initiate a process where a working unit (department, faculty or research team) works to diminish the influence of such gendered perceptions of excellence on the situation of particularly women researchers.

If you like to get an initial insight on how gender mechanism can work in hiring processes at research organizations, you can follow the link (http://media.medfarm.uu.se/play/video/2528) to a lecture of Marieke van den Brink: “How are gender mechanisms influencing professorial recruitment and selection in the Dutch academic field”.

Marieke is assistant professor of Strategic Human Resource Management at the department of Business Administration and is affiliated with the Institute for Gender studies at the Radboud University Nijmegen. She was invited by Minna Salminen to give this lecture at Uppsala University in 2011.