Ilenia Picardi, Labirinti di Cristallo. Strutture di Genere nell’Accademia e nella Ricerca, FrancoAngeli, 2020
10.6092/issn.2038-3460/17574
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2038-3460
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Letizia Zampino
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Tecnoscienza – Italian Journal of Science & Technology Studies
Ilenia Picardi, Crystal Labyrinths. Gender Structures in Academia and Research, FrancoAngeli, 2020
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Book Reviews
2022-07-07
2023-06-30
2022-07-07
2023-10-26
168-171
TS
Letizia Zampino
2022/07/07
10.6092/issn.2038-3460/17574
168
Sapienza University of Rome
2038-3460
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171
Ilenia Picardi, Crystal Labyrinths. Gender Structures in Academia and Research, FrancoAngeli, 2020
https://tecnoscienza.unibo.it/article/download/17574/16424
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168                                                            Tecnoscienza – 13 (1)


and a new scientific contribution, and those who are interested in the pro-
duction of knowledge in medicine for professional or educational pur-
poses.

References
Bleakley, A. (2012) The Proof Is in the Pudding: Putting Actor-Network-Theory to
       Work in Medical Education, in “Medical Teacher”, 34 (6), pp. 462-467.
Latour, B. and Woolgar, S. (1979) Laboratory Life: The Construction of Scientific
       Facts, Princeton, Princeton University Press.
Mol, A. (2002) The Body Multiple: Ontology in Medical Practice, Durham, Duke
       University Press.

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   Ilenia Picardi
Labirinti di Cristallo. Strutture di Genere nell’Accademia e nella Ricerca
[Crystal Labyrinths. Gender Structures in Academia and Research],
Milano, FrancoAngeli, 2020, pp. 124

Letizia Zampino Sapienza University of Rome

    The book Labirinti di cristallo. Strutture di genere nell’accademia e nella
ricerca [Crystal Labyrinths. Gender structures in academia and research] by
Ilenia Picardi outlines a framework aiming at unravelling gendered prac-
tices in academic and scientific institutions.
    The author adopts the theoretical perspective provided by feminist
studies in the field of Science and Technology Studies (STS) as a toolkit
capable of discussing the complexity of the metaphorical and iconographic
representations of “crystal ceiling” and the “leaky pipeline” and of observ-
ing how gendered practices construct academic paths similar to “crystal
labyrinths”. With the labyrinth’s metaphor, Picardi shows how women do
science by oscillating between innovative disciplinary mobility and hybrid-
isation dynamics practices (Sciannamblo and Viteritti 2021) and the repro-
duction of male-dominated career models. Crystal labyrinths expose the
rhetoric of merit as a system designed to justify the low presence of women
in high positions because they are supposedly less competent than men in
fields such as science, politics, and business. Indeed, Picardi’s book high-
lights that the current systems of evaluation of competence and conse-
quently of career progression in academic and research work are under-
pinned by gendered processes.
Book Review                                                             169

    The volume is articulated in six chapters, and it is grounded on empir-
ical evidence coming out from both quantitative and qualitative analysis
techniques.
    In Chapter One the statistical analysis describes the gender dynamics
in recruitment processes as a consequence of the latest reform – dated 2010
– of the Italian academic system. The data provided by Picardi show the
substantial precariousness of academic careers. Such precariousness be-
comes structural when the sex variable is introduced. The author intro-
duces what she calls the Glass Door Index (GDI), with the aim of opera-
tionalising the gender gap that occurs in the transition from low-waged
positions to permanent positions. The GDI has the potential to show how
evaluation policies and reforms, which have introduced important trans-
formations in the selection of academic staff and in career regulation, make
Italian women more exposed to the risk of precariousness than their male
colleagues. The reform acts as an invisible door limiting access to academic
career progression, reinforcing the gender gap in those disciplinary fields
– for example in scientific-technological disciplines – where the presence
of women is already inherently lower due to historical and cultural factors.
In Italy, the extension of the precarious status causes delays in the time
needed for career stabilisation, affecting especially the recruitment of
women in the 25-40 age group. There is an invisible door that limits the
access to scientific careers, reinforced by evaluation systems that have a
differential impact by gender, especially in an age range when women, as
the author points out, may be faced with the choice between career and
pregnancy.
    Chapter Two focuses on the issue of gender equity in feminist litera-
ture. In feminist STS studies the issue of equity unveils gender segregation
and discrimination as factors that prevent women from accessing the tech-
noscientific education. Such studies have also questioned social, political,
and cultural dynamics, whereby informal discrimination is maintained
even when women enter scientific careers (Harding 1986). Picardi, intro-
ducing the issue of gender equity, observes the dynamics of scientific pro-
duction as influenced by practices, values, assumptions, and power rela-
tions dominated by a model of scientist, who is generally male, white, and
Western.
    The concept of gender equity sets the ground for the theoretical frame-
work outlined in Chapter Three, which underpins the analytical reading
and shapes the qualitative analysis of Chapter Four. Chapter Three fea-
tures the dialogue between feminist STS and the gender approach of the
“practice turn” in organisation studies, launched by Silvia Gherardi
(2019). Like Gherardi, Picardi turns the analysis to the gender structures
and processes that disclose the role of sociomaterial practices in the pro-
duction and reproduction of power asymmetries in organisations. The con-
cept of practice allows looking at gender as a process that, running through
170                                                          Tecnoscienza – 13 (1)


the academic institution and research groups, reproduces patriarchal mod-
els of recruitment and career assessment. Practice-based literature and
feminist STS studies accompany the reader to look at gender in its doing
through the enactment of gendered practices that perform the production
of institutional and academic structures understood as gendered organiza-
tions.
    Chapter Four provides the results of an empirical research consisting
of semi-structured interviews and three focus groups involving 26 women
researchers in STEM and 18 women researchers in Social Sciences and
Humanities (SSH), by using a qualitative analysis carried out through the
NVivo software. The collected experiences have been codified and aggre-
gated to capture the different dimensions of the examined phenomenon.
This chapter aims to provide an interpretative scheme to disentangle the
gendering processes that create and reproduce gender inequities in aca-
demic and scientific institutions. Picardi identifies three levels of gendering
processes, acting and producing academic and research environments
dominated by patriarchal logics, which enact gendered practices. For Pi-
cardi, the gendering processes are embedded in 1) academic and research
institutional structures; 2) the organisation of academic and research work;
3) academic and research culture. These processes, while encapsulating the
phenomena in which gender becomes a practice, also structure the prac-
tices that reproduce gender discrimination in the institutional contexts of
academic research. Gendering processes are portrayed as “crystal laby-
rinths” that reproduce male-dominated top positions. According to the au-
thor, there is not just one invisible obstacle at the top of women’s careers,
as the metaphor of the “glass ceiling” suggests, but multiple obstacles sit-
uated along their – often fragmented – career trajectories. However, the
crystal labyrinth metaphor theorised by Picardi risks excluding the socio-
material density of emancipatory practices against the homologation to
male models.
    In Chapter Five, the author presents an analytical exploration of the
mechanisms that underpin gender practices. The mechanisms are embed-
ded in the scientific-reputation system based on the concepts of merit and
excellence: women’s careers are, therefore, mainly evaluated by groups of
men according to spatial and temporal mechanisms built on a patriarchal
model of science. The concepts of “merit” and “excellence” reinforce, in
certain ways, the biases linked to evaluation criteria, which, even if pro-
claimed as objective and neutral, contribute to reiterating gender discrim-
ination. Women’s careers are assessed using evaluative and quantitative
criteria which, on the contrary, tend to favour linear paths and work
rhythms congenial to the model of work historically and culturally free
from caring roles. Women must work twice as hard to be considered at the
same level as their male colleagues: a phenomenon known in literature as
the double standard of excellence. The chapter ends with an interesting
Book Review                                                                      171

discussion about the temporal dimension in the Italian academic context.
The author captures how the dimension of time is plural and multidimen-
sional. Time, entwined with politics, power, knowledge and control, im-
poses constraints and rhythms, generating gender asynchronies that, in
turn, produce tensions between personal time and work time, especially in
the 30-40 age class, in which women define intimate relationships and fu-
ture projects, even those of motherhood. Tensions between private and
professional life can cause a loss of planning for the future, and in some
cases, as some of the stories point out, a “forgetting to choose to face the
choice of motherhood” (p. 68, my translation).
     The book ends (Chapter Six) with a critique of the supposed objectivity
of scientific career evaluation methods. The author notes that gender dis-
crimination in academic environments can only be investigated by ac-
knowledging the social character of science. Analysing the constitutive and
normative elements of science means observing the systematic operation of
social mechanisms – male-dominated leadership and network patterns,
gender asymmetries in the distribution of research funding – that sustain
the processes of recruitment, reputation building, and promotion in aca-
demic careers.
     In writing this review I adhered to a feminist epistemology – which un-
derpins the entire structure of the book – by situating myself as a young
post-doctoral researcher. The reading of this book is striking for its criti-
cism of equity and temporal mechanisms of research, which are reflected
in the homologation to the male scientist model and in certain “non-
choices”, such as the renunciation to have children narrated by some of the
women who have been interviewed. It is an intrinsically political book that
shows how the rhetoric of merit translates into “replacing the future cate-
gory with that of the extended present” (p. 95, my translation, original em-
phasis). This volume contributes to disentangling the labyrinths of gender
mechanisms in order to rethink the structures of the organisation of scien-
tific work – and the production of knowledge – claiming the right to choose
and plan the future.

References
Sciannamblo, M. and Viteritti, A. (eds.) (2021) Fare la Differenza: Stereotipi di Ge-
       nere e Nuove Pratiche di Affermazione nei Campi Scientifici, Roma, Centro
       Stampa Sapienza.
Gherardi, S. (2019) How to Conduct a Practice-based Study: Problems and Methods,
      Cheltenham, Edward Elgar.
Harding, S.G. (1986) The Science Question in Feminism, Ithaca, NY, Cornell Uni-
      versity Press.

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