The Work of Producing Quality in Changing Academia from the Standpoint of Junior Female Scholars

This paper is a chapter in my doctoral thesis. It builds on another chapter in which I explore the gendered work of ‘boasting’ in the context of changing academia, and how this work is essential for furthering ruling purposes and interests connected to the marketization and global competitiveness of Finnish academia. I pick up from there to study the evaluation ideology from the standpoint of junior female scholars. This involves explicating: how particular managerial texts, textual technologies and artifacts, including those related to tenure track recruitment, hold people accountable in ways that lead to the production of particular notions of quality; how this is part of furthering particular organizational and managerial purposes; and how the work related to producing this quality involves the (re)production of a particular gendered order in academia. I work from there to suggest a reworking of the concept of homo-sociality in academic recruitment. In the analysis I draw mainly on an in-depth interview with one female scholar; the various versions of an article manuscript she wrote as it developed over a lengthy review process for publication in a top journal within her field; the review documents; as well as the correspondence with editors of the journal in question. Furthermore, I draw on interviews with differently positioned scholars and academic managers, field notes from various events, and text material produced over a period of three years.