Athena SWAN: “Institutional peacocking” in the neoliberal university
基于对英国和爱尔兰35位雅典娜天鹅奖负责人的深度访谈，研究该奖项如何被新自由主义议程利用，成为机构提升声誉和进行“美德信号”的工具，而非推动真正的性别平等变革。
Abstract This paper contributes to understandings of how Athena SWAN (AS) is shaping contemporary equality work in the context of the neoliberal university, and whether it is contributing to performative ways of doing equality work. We center our research on the exploration of the question of how the gender‐agenda is being captured by the neoliberal agenda, drawing on 35 in‐depth qualitative interviews with AS champions across the UK and Republic of Ireland. The core aim of the study is to explore how AS has been co‐opted and mobilized as a vehicle for contemporary (neoliberal) equality work. We argue that rather than contributing to transformational change, AS serves as an effective tool for institutional reputation gains and (extended) virtue signaling, conceptualized and coined here as “ institutional peacocking. ” This in turn, functions and is implemented in diverse institutional settings, with primarily institutional benefit, at the cost of AS champions who carry out gender equality work. We contribute empirically and conceptually to theorizations and current understandings of gender equality work in higher education, especially through AS champions' experience and the institutional benefits that present opportunity costs for some individuals, potentially serving to further entrench stereotyped perceptions of who should be doing equality work in universities, and critically, how institutions benefit.