Improving Female Researchers’ Careers through Gender Equality Plan actions: Experiences from a Slovenian Research Institution

Abstract

This article draws on experiences in implementing the Gender Equality Plan adopted at the Research Centre of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts in early 2019. It discusses the careers of female researchers, their prospects for career advancement, and how their excellence is construed, negotiated, and promoted in the Slovenian academic sphere. The article proposes a contextualised understanding of female academic careers and excellence. This understanding is sensitive to the structural variables that define researchers’ academic prospects, as these prospects result from the intersection of various personal and structural factors. It argues that in order to plan appropriate strategies for improving career prospects for female researchers in a Gender Equality Plan, it is necessary not only to consider the national context, the legislation and demographic and other “objective data”, but also to take seriously the institutional culture and the fact that individual researchers are affected by neoliberal academia in different ways that depend on their structural position within the institution.