Internationalisation, competition and performance orientation are nowadays essential in the managing and financing of universities. This pattern has intensified with the austerity measures and fiscal consolidation that followed the financial crisis in 2008. This article examines the academic labour process and career making of academics from a gender perspective. Based on findings deriving from an Icelandic University, we argue that the austerity measures and increased focus on becoming one of the top universities in the world has changed the official responsibilities of academics. We show how ‘academic housework’ affects academic capital and how the amount of academic housework is unequally distributed between senior academics and newcomers. While the majority of academics conform to this contemporary academic system, marginalised groups put up some resistance but with limited success.

In the labour market women’s jobs have frequently been conceptually and literally tied to housework and hence thought of as unskilled and therefore undervalued. Although academic institutions have undergone changes, the fact that women still carry the main responsibility for domestic and caring tasks continues to follow them into the academic work environment. In this explorative study we focus on the gendered aspects of undervalued work in academia by examining how academic housework manifests itself in different academic contexts and how early career academics in six European countries contend with it. We will link the undervalued academic work to housework in a double sense. Firstly, we will discuss how domestic housework affects the working conditions of academic women and men differently in their early career. Secondly, we will approach academic work through the lenses of academic housework, hence making use of the notion of ‘housework’ in a transferred and more figurative meaning. The discussion is aimed at developing a new conceptual framework in the analysis of gendered academic careers. In this way the topic of academic housework, which seems to be accompanied by social taint, may become more easily discussable within the academic work environment.

This article examines whether age, work-related, and family-related predictors explain differences in the academic advancement of women and men in Iceland. Survey data were analyzed by binary logistic regression. The findings put that women climb the academic career ladder at a slower pace than men. This finding puts one of the widely known excuses for the underrepresentation of women in full professor positions into jeopardy, namely that this is because of family responsibilities. Work-related variables explain some of the gender differences. The study shows that as promotion is slower among women, even if family-related variables are not negatively affecting the odds, the academic pipeline is leaking despite Iceland's reputation for being at the forefront where gender equality issues are concerned.

This article presents findings on factors hindering academic employees from becoming involved in collaboration activities. Based on survey data, we map out perceived barriers to collaboration whereby five categories emerge: teaching obligations, partner (dis)interest, partners’ resources, academic freedom, and university resources. By means of multiple regression analysis, we examine the extent to which individual, intra-, and inter-organisational factors explain these perceived barriers to collaboration. The study was carried out in Iceland, where university objectives are still heavily based on teaching activities, and few entrepreneurial activities take place in academia. Our results reveal that age and academic disciplines play a main role in the perceptions of academics regarding barriers to collaboration, especially when it comes to barriers grounded in teaching obligations or university resources. Most perceived barriers are based on the internal level that is lack of resources on behalf of universities. The study, therefore, provides a new perspective relative to earlier findings that have indicated that barriers to collaboration exist mostly at the individual level. We conclude that academic institutions can play a more prominent role in the activation of third mission activities than they have been doing so far.

The flipped classroom offers a new approach to student-centred teaching and learning by moving the lecture out of the classroom. Research on the topic reveals that the flexibility of viewing the recorded lectures at a time and speed that is convenient to the student is what students appreciate mostly in the flipped classroom. This article examines the viewing pattern of students regarding recorded lectures in a course that has been flipped. The findings reveal a decline in the number of students who view the recordings over the duration of the course semester. Furthermore, the findings support earlier research results revealing that women and older students rely more on recorded lectures than other students. In addition, the study shows that there is a positive correlation between viewing the recorded material and the final grade of students in the course. It is thus surmised that even if in-class activity is very important for the flipped classroom to work, the recordings do have additional value, which is reflected by higher final course grades for students who view them. The flexibility of viewing recordings more than once and at the most relevant and convenient time seems to increase students’ understanding, and is regarded an important asset of flipped classroom teaching.

This article examines the explanations offered by men and women, at different academic ranks, for the scarcity of women in full professorial positions in Icelandic universities. Data derive from interviews and a survey involving the total Icelandic academic population. We test three hypotheses: Firstly, academics will not see family responsibilities as explanation, secondly, women will more often refer to a male-dominated environment and men more often to the ‘pipeline’ metaphor. Thirdly, the views of full professor women will be comparable to that of academic men. We find that the impact of the national context is considerably less than that of the gendered academic organizational context. Men and women explain gender inequality within academia differently. Moreover, full professor women are less convinced by the male-dominated environment explanation than lower-ranked women. The article calls for the visibility of gendered patterns in order to make changes.