‘Good girls’: emphasised femininity as cloning culture in academia

Abstract

Gender inequality in academia might be understood as an effect of the belief of a contradiction between woman and science, which make it difficult for women to appropriate the right to author and authorise acts of knowing and thinking in science. In relation to this concern, the aim of this article is to explore how a group of successful women researchers do science and uphold their position as researchers. It is based on evidence from participant observation and qualitative interviews. Theoretical understandings of femininity and cloning culture are used to analyse how the women united as a group that displays a subordinate, heterosexual femininity. Their strategies might be understood as a form of cultural cloning. By expressing a collective emphasised femininity grounded in white, heterosexual, middle-class norms, the women experienced a sameness that rendered them strong as a group and well adapted in academia.