Discourses of Gender Equality in Academic Institutions in Selected Central and Eastern European Countries

ABSTRACT Drawing on Foucault's concept of discursive power, Acker's theory of inequality regimes, and feminist approaches to organizational change, this article explores how gender (in)equalities are discursively constructed and sustained within academia, what opportunities for change these discourses enable, and their implications for individual subjectivity. The analysis is based on qualitative reports derived from interviews and focus groups conducted during gender audits in five academic institutions across Central and Eastern Europe (Bulgaria, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, and Slovenia). The study identifies four discourses through which actors in academia construct gender (in)equality: the discourse on differences, the neoliberal academia discourse, the negotiating discourse, and the critical discourse. The first two reproduce stereotypes and sustain inequality by framing it as an individual rather than a structural issue. In contrast, negotiating and critical discourses open possibilities for transformation through lived experience, reflexivity, and theoretical critique. The findings contribute to a nuanced understanding of how discursive power operates in academia—simultaneously constraining and enabling change and subjective experience in supposedly “gender‐neutral” academia. This perspective is particularly relevant to the Central and Eastern European region context, in which the coexistence of neoliberal, postfeminist, EU policy, and post‐socialist discourses shapes contemporary gender regimes in academia.