Equality in appointment committees as a sensitive field

A comment on Victoria Hegner's contribution

Abstract

Referring to Victoria Hegner's research project, this commentary highlights three interacting aspects that contribute significantly to the methodological challenges of ethnographic research in the field of gender equality policies in university appointment committees. First, the combination of the topics of higher education, gender equality policy, and appointment committees constitutes a sensitive, hermetic field in which institutional norms, gender-normative discourses, and power relations overlap, and gender equality proves to be a marginalized practice that conflicts with the self-image of the university as a ‘rational’ organization. Second, institutional resistance to the research can be attributed to the imagined reception of the research results by implicitly present publics—collateral publics—and their criticism in connection with the feared exposure of abuses. Thirdly, processes of self- as well as external positioning of the researcher in interactions with different interest groups prove to be relevant. These can be analyzed along the dimensions of situatedness in the field, value distance, action in the field, power relations, and the temporal course of the research. It is shown that the researcher's involvement in the field, which is characteristic of ethnographic research, not only presents challenges but also offers valuable insights into the concealed contexts of the sensitive field of “equality in appointment committees.”