The glass door of academia: Unveiling new gendered bias in academic recruitment

Gender statistics and studies on gendering mechanisms have been developing over recent years on two parallel tracks. This research reveals the need to rethink the standard indicators used in European comparative analyses to identify (1) gender-related mechanisms responsible for the production and reproduction processes of gender asymmetries, (2) their specificities in different local contexts, and (3) the profound transformations that have characterized the academies and the research system in Europe in recent years. The paper analyses the data on the composition of Italian academia provided by the Italian Ministry of Education, universities and research from a gender perspective. The introduction of the glass door index, specifically designed to measure gendering processes taking place in the recruitment stages in Italian academia, discloses new forms of gender segregation in Italian universities after the last academic reform (Law 240/2010), despite the emphasis placed on the neutral and meritocratic criteria of the new recruitment and career progression rules.