Research project The project focuses on practices linked to collegiality and academic housework. The project aims to understand how these factors affect the possibility of equal career paths and working conditions within academia.
The project is about investigating gender equality in academia by focusing on practices linked to collegiality and academic housework. Collegiality in academia is partly about a way of leading and distributing work, and partly about collaboration and community between colleagues. Academic housework refers to the administrative and organizational tasks that academics perform in addition to teaching and research, and which are often invisible and undervalued. The project wants to understand how these factors affect the possibility of gender-equal career paths and working conditions.
This project aims to explore new ways of explaining gender inequality in higher education by examining collegiality and academic housework. By providing an integrated theoretical understanding of these two concepts —which occur simultaneously in practice but are often studied separately—we seek to explain the mechanisms underpinning collegial work.
Based on the assumption that collegiality is linked to the production and reproduction of gender norms, we analyse how collegiality and academic housework impact working conditions and gender inequality in Swedish universities.
Research Questions:
This three-year project, employs a qualitative multiple-case study approach, investigating three Swedish universities. We will conduct document analyses alongside semi-structured interviews with university and departmental managers, as well as lecturers. To capture the daily work of academics, we also collect calendarbased reflections on respondents’ work over the previous two weeks.
This project will generate crucial insights into the practices that perpetuate gender inequality under the guise of collegiality. By examining the structures shaping academic work, it will contribute to ensuring that universities remain spaces of innovation, equality, and progress.
