Male and female academic careers at the University of Turin: improvements, persistences and emerging criticalities

The goal of this contribution is to analyse, from a sociological and gender perspective, the scientific careers at the University of Turin (Italy), in the period immediately before the introduction of Gelmini’s Law (L. 240/2010) and nowadays. A special focus is placed on the trends regarding the new positions as temporary researchers introduced by Gelmini’s Law. The previous position as researcher with open-ended labour contract has been substituted with two new categories of temporary researchers: RTD-A, a3 up to 5-years labour contract as “junior”researcher without guarantee of being hired as professor at the end of the contract, and RTD-B, a 3-years tenured position as “senior” researcher with a higher income and that (differently from RTD-A) allows the researcher to be hired as associate professor at the end of the contract if he/she has obtained the National Academic Qualification (ASN). What are the scientific fields and the departments where the horizontal and vertical segregation are evident? Does thetransformation of the academic position as researcher from a permanent labour contract (before the Gelmini’s Law) to a temporary one (after the Gelmini’s Law) penalize or not the female scientists? If yes, especially in what scientific fields and departments? Studies show that women are more exposed than men to non-tenured positions (Glazer-Raymo, 2008). Is this also the case of the University of Turin? Are women underrepresented in the new more guaranteed RTD-Bpositions? Are there any differences in the temporal articulation (for example,in the time spent in each position) of female and male careers? Secondary quantitative data from database of MIUR (Italian Ministry for Education, University and Research), from University of Turinwebsite and data provided by the personnel office of the University of Turin are analysed.