Between formal and informal. Promoting feminization of the managerial positions of Italian universities after the neoliberal turn

Part of the broad line of research on inequalities in academia, this article focuses on a more specific but less investigated aspect: men’s and women’s unequal access to university governance positions in the context of neoliberal academia. We assume from the literature on institutional change and gender equality the importance of considering both formal and informal rules. The article empirically analyzes the Italian case study, where a variety of feminization processes have emerged under the umbrella of weak national legislation. Five universities are examined as examples of this variety. Adopting a longitudinal perspective, their apical decision-making bodies are compared in relation to the evolution of their formal rules of access (through the analysis of the statutes) and their feminization processes (through the analysis of their composition). We show that, in the Italian context, paradoxically, the concentration of power in the hands of the rector determined, in the five universities under analysis, an incentive for top-down policies to promote gender equality as an informal practice linked to a search for legitimation. This happened independently of formal rules promoting gender equality in the bottom-up selection of women for apical university decision-making bodies. Therefore, the contribution of this work is twofold: the importance of informal rules in the processes of institutional change is confirmed; however, unlike what is more often highlighted in the literature, it is shown that they are not only a brake on change, since under certain conditions, they can also play a positive role and accelerate the pace of change.