A True Professor. About the Ideal Picture of a Scientist and its Impact on Some Individuals’ Relationship to the Academic Profession

摘要

Although women have had access to colleges and universities in Sweden for quite some timeand the share of women at the undergraduate level has been high for many years (40% by thelate 1950:s, nowadays women are a majority at that level), still the share of women professorsis low. This paper will study some researchers’ view on how a professor should be, and alsohow they relate themselves to that ideal. The method used is qualitative interviews, whichhave then been analysed by discourse analysis. The paper also contains a discussion on thehistory of the universities from the Middle Ages and forward, to show how the impact of thathistorical legacy affects universities today.Eight respondents were interviewed, four women and four men. They all took a similarview as to how a professor should be, but there were some differences in how they relatedthemselves to that picture. A professor, according to their description, is passionate, all butcompletely focused on the work, likes the work, works overtime and writes papers that areinteresting for other researchers. They also describe the way to tenure as lined with insecureterms of employment and a low salary. At large the men seemed more easily self secure intheir belief that they had what it takes to become a professor, while the women at the sametime as they were sure they had what it takes, still were aware that it is not self evident that awoman, especially not one who chooses to have children, is seen as a potential professor.The ideal picture of a scientist that the respondents described is also present, but in adifferent way, in the history of the universities. The universities grew out of the Christianmonasteries and stayed a matter of the church for a long time. Around the enlightenmentthough, it became an organisation for the men of the upper classes. At the universities the“manly” “sense” was cultivated, and made even more evident by its contrast to the “female”“sensibility”. In this way, the universities were adapted to these men’s way of life. It showseven today, partly in the way a scientist is supposed to be able to work passionately for longhours, that is without much responsibility for anything outside the university, and partlybecause the male body is “natural” within the academy, while the women who wish to gainaccess to the academia have to exceed their bodies (with the sensibility and inability to sensethat is ascribed to it) and prove their right to a place in a way that the men do not.