ABSTRACT
Although women make up the majority of all staff working in UK higher education (Advance HE, 2023), they remain under-represented among academic positions in science, engineering and technology subjects as well as in managerial roles. They are over-represented in administrative and support roles (Advance HE, 2023). Whilst universities consider themselves meritocratic systems, critics have challenged the degree of meritocracy in academic evaluations. If universities were meritocratic then academics should be judged on merit alone, while social categories such as gender should be irrelevant. Research has shown that this is not the case - biased evaluations and decision-making are still pervasive in academia and contribute to women's disadvantaged positions (Trevino eta/., 2018; van den Brinkand Benschop, 2011). Weisshaar (2017) found that performance differences between men and women could only partially explain the existing gender gap in promotions to tenure and full professorships. Biased tenure evaluations were main contributors to women's under-representation on tenure tracks and in professorship positions. Van den Brink and Benschop (2011) have argued that biases such as same sex favouritism and the 'similar to me' effect displayed by male gatekeepers contribute to these inegualities in evaluation.
