Gendered hegemony and its contradictions among Finnish university physicists

This article addresses the issue of gender imbalance in Finnish universities in the domain of physics as a historical and dialectical phenomenon. Drawing from the Gramscian notion of hegemony and the activity-theoretical notion of contradiction, this paper analyses gendered hegemonic and contradictory forces steering physicists’ careers. This article argues that hegemony is to be seen as a historical and dialectical process rather as a status quo; it introduces methodological tools for analysing the maturity of hegemonic struggles in empirical data and envisions future developments for more gender-balanced academic communities. The empirical analysis of this article is based on interview data with 36 Finnish university physicists. A discourse-analytical framework is utilised to disclose hegemonic and contradictory forces as manifested in the data. This study shows that instances of resistance are present in the activities of the interviewed physicists even though consent to the prevailing hegemonies still persists.