What is behind Saturn's Rings?: methodological problems in the investigation of gender and race in the academic profession

This paper assesses a small‐scale study designed to illuminate the hitherto hidden processes underlying the underrepresentation of women and members of minority ethnic groups in the academic profession. Previous studies of the academic profession point to the importance of academic power and the significance of ‘gatekeepers’ controlling the careers of aspirants in particular subject communities. These studies have begun to acknowledge gender issues while race continues to be ignored. The purposes of the study were firstly to elucidate possible directions for further investigation and secondly to develop and test conceptual and methodological tools. The investigation concentrated on routes to power in the academic profession, especially the informal and hidden processes of racial and gender differentiation. Power in the academic profession is the ability to judge the academic merit of intellectual output of aspirants and thereby control their careers. The study documented the importance of subject communities and their implicit values and assumptions—Bourdieu ‘s notion of the habitus. It showed the importance of judgements of academic merit at the very earliest stages of careers for racial and gender differentiation within the profession. Members of minority ethnic groups remained invisible to this investigation. Explicating the processes by which they are eliminated from the profession remains a most important and intractable problem in need of urgent theorising and investigation. The peculiarly gendered characteristics of the ‘habitus’ in science and the differences between the new and the old universities also remain invisible, hidden by Saturn's rings.