Confidence culture in neoliberal academia: the case of #Womeninacademia on Twitter

Abstract

This study focuses on the intersection of gender dynamics, neoliberal higher education, and social media. Despite neoliberalism's claims of promoting meritocracy in higher education, its emphasis on competition exacerbated existing gendered, racial, and class-based inequalities in academia under the guise of productivity. A rising method to tackle gender disparities in (and beyond) academia is utilizing Twitter (rebranded as X). This study examines how gender dynamics in neoliberal higher education are portrayed on Twitter through the popular yet underexplored hashtag #womeninacademia. It is a content analysis of 4500 tweets (1175 tweets after excluding retweets and spams) with the hashtag from early 2021 to late 2022, highlighting the (post)pandemic period. Findings reveal #womeninacademia's prevalent use in addressing self-promotion for empowerment and inequalities in academia, both articulated through individualized narratives. This study argues that while this hashtag holds empowering potential, it also perpetuates the 'confidence culture' and competitiveness of formal neoliberal academic settings.