Gender Dynamics in Academia: A Figurational Exploration of Gendered Established–Outsider Relations in Physics
摘要
The aim of this chapter is to explore the question to what extent male and female physicists are linked in an established–outsider figuration. The approach includes an organizational sociological framing of the university as a place of work and triangulates this on the theoretical level with the process and figurational theory according to Norbert Elias. In addition, the chapter ties in with existing work that examines gender dynamics through the lens of process sociology. In the course of the discussion, it becomes apparent that men in physics can be seen as the established group due to the longer access to institutions of higher education and that they devalue female physicists with praise gossip and blame gossip in the form of stereotyping and discrimination. However, the psycho- as well as sociogenesis of figuration between the genders in physics is changing with increasing legal recourse against hostile incidents at work as well as a more assertive attitude towards (male) perpetrators.