Navigating Neoliberal Pressures and Patriarchal Legacies: The Lasting Impact of Feudal–Patriarchal Work Relations in Polish Artistic Universities

ABSTRACT This article examines the persistence and transformation of patriarchal–feudal structures in Polish art universities in the context of post‐1989 higher education (HE) reforms. Drawing on 22 in‐depth interviews with socially engaged academic staff (18 women and four men) across 11 Polish artistic institutions, the study explores how institutional power relations, gendered labor, and academic hierarchies are experienced, contested, and reproduced. The sample was selected based on interviewees' visible feminist, egalitarian, and antidiscriminatory commitments. Using grounded theory methodology, the research employed deductive and inductive coding to analyze narratives concerning institutional norms, evaluation regimes, teaching philosophies, care work, and professional hierarchies. The findings indicate that art universities in Poland continue to operate as loosely coupled systems governed by studio‐based class authority and entrenched informal networks. These institutional logics closely resemble historical feudal formations, sustained through pre‐communist institutional memory and reinforced by patriarchal norms. Unlike the neo‐feudal tendencies emerging in Western universities as part of academic capitalism, the feudal order in Polish HE is a longue durée structure that never fully dissolved. It constitutes a deeply interwoven hybrid of feudal hierarchy and patriarchal authority, reproduced through formal mechanisms (such as performance evaluation and career progression) and informal cultural codes. Feminist interventions by academic staff often remain peripheral to dominant power structures, whereas meritocratic and gender‐neutral discourses obscure enduring structural inequalities. The article concludes that the patriarchal–feudal configuration within Polish artistic higher education institutions persists not by resisting change outright, but by absorbing reforms and critiques while maintaining its hierarchical foundations. Understanding this historically contingent and hybrid order is key to conceptualizing collective strategies for meaningful institutional transformation.