Reflections on the challenges faced by female academics in the context of academic capitalism

The primary aim of the present study is to perform a conceptual analysis of the challenges faced by women throughout their academic careers in a context where rationality, performance, commercialization, and academic capitalism are dominant. To this end, a review of mainstream theoretical and empirical articles from the last five years is presented. As a result, four main challenges are identified: 1) sustained inequality faced by women in higher education, 2) negative effect of academic capitalism on women’s academic careers, 3) predominant positioning of masculinity in academia, and 4) reconciliation between work and family life experience by women. It is concluded that academic capitalism generates gender-based processes that affect the academic trajectories of female academics.