ABSTRACT

Feminist scholars have critiqued neoliberal meritocracy as discriminating against female academics through the persistence of gender-biased assumptions, closed procedures of recruitment and promotion, and patriarchal network connections. While these scholars demand fairer meritocratic competition, we explore possibilities to (re)imagine academic career and university leadership beyond the dominant discourse of neoliberal meritocracy. Based on interviews with female deans in Indonesian universities, we identified two alternative discourses (in)forming their subjectivity as university leaders, which may both challenge and contextualise neoliberal meritocracy. The first is the Islamic notion of leadership as amanah (God-given responsibility), and the second is a view of university as family. We demonstrate that understanding university leadership through these discourses enables and fosters a sense of trust, nurture, harmony, relationality, and spirituality; which are in contrast with neoliberal meritocracy’s objectivism, individualism, corporatism, and entrepreneurialism. Nevertheless, neoliberal meritocracy is quick to co-opt these contextual ways of being for its neoliberal agenda.

摘要

女权主义学者批评新自由主义精英政治通过持续存在的性别偏见假设、封闭的招聘和晋升程序以及父权制网络联系来歧视女性学者。虽然这些学者要求更公平的精英竞争，但我们探索了在新自由主义精英统治的主导话语之外（重新）想象学术生涯和大学领导力的可能性。根据对印度尼西亚大学女院长的采访，我们确定了两种不同的话语（in）形成了她们作为大学领导者的主体性，这可能既挑战了新自由主义的精英统治，也可能将其置于情境中。第一个是作为amanah的伊斯兰领导观念（天赐的责任），二是把大学看成一家人。我们证明，通过这些话语了解大学领导力能够促进并培养信任感、培养感、和谐感、关系感和灵性；这与新自由主义精英主义的客观主义、个人主义、社团主义和企业家主义形成鲜明对比。尽管如此，新自由主义精英政治很快就会为其新自由主义议程选择这些上下文方式。