Chapter 5: Academic Times, Shortcuts, and Styles – Exploring the Case of Time for a PhD from a Gender Perspective

The PhD places considerable demands on candidates which trigger varying modes of experiencing time (Atkinson, 2000; Burke et al., 2004; Araújo, 2015; Dakka, this book; Parry, Atkinson, & Delamont, 1997). In this chapter, the authors propose exploring four core ideas from a gender perspective: (i) why time for PhD is so important from a sociological point of view; (ii) what are the main trends reshaping the PhD program with impact on candidates’ experience of time; (iii) what are the main ideologies underpinning these alterations; and (iv) how far PhD time structures (in the sense developed by Lewis & Weigert, 1981) affects PhD candidates differently, according to gender. In fact, a theoretical analysis of the time for a PhD entails an understanding of the main trends for time in academia and science (Macaulay & Davies, 2019). Indeed, much has been said about academic time worldwide (Menzies & Newson, 2008; Noonan, 2015; Pereira, 2016; Smith, 2015; Spurling, 2015; Vostal, 2015; Ylijoki, 2010, 2013). In spite of the specificities, there is a widespread consensus among authors that the neoliberal mode of time governance in the academic world fosters ways of structuring and valuing time that prioritizes standardization and linearity (Augusto et al., 2018; Felt, 2015; Macaulay & Davies, 2019; Slaugther & Leslie, 1999; Ylijoki, this book). The growing economic importance of the PhD for Higher Education Institutions (HEI) is part of this trend that, insisting in building up an unique dominant time, ends up doing away with many kinds of temporalities regarded as not suitably adapted or temporally adjusted to the increasing “PhD industrialization” (Louvel, 2012).