Gender equality policies and action plans are taking root on European, national and organizational levels, which is no different for the academia. Universities increasingly develop gender equality action plans and under the FP7 programme, for instance, a number of projects study gender relations within the academia, teaching and research, and try to change them so as to increase gender awareness and equality among the sexes. An important feature in such discussions is the fact that universities are managed by a meritocratic focus on performance and scientific excellence, and while these are mostly coined as gender-neutral, research has revealed the underlying gender bias and ‘masculine’ values at work.
This paper is part of my doctoral research project. Starting from a state of the art on issues of gender inequality in the academia, it develops more particularly the concept of a gender equality culture within the academia and how this is related to particular understandings of femininities and masculinities. A first section of the paper will sketch the headlines of the literature on gender equality in the academia. A second section digs into the understandings of the concept of gender equality culture by this literature. A third section discusses how these understandings of the concept of gender equality culture are tied to concepts of masculinity or femininity. Finally, the paper develops the research design of the doctoral study examining the Flemish case more in detail.
