Who gets to progress? Multistakeholder negotiations and identity evaluation in academic careers

Abstract Career progression in academia is negotiated across multiple stages, yet the relational and institutional dynamics shaping these negotiations remain underexamined. This article examines how career progression negotiations unfold between STEM women academics and decision-makers, including faculty Deans, within Australian universities. Drawing on constructivist grounded theory, the study analyses 50 interviews across 14 STEM faculties. The study finds that career progression negotiations are identity-evaluative encounters that determine whether women academics are recognised as legitimate and promotion-ready. Women academics are required to render their identities visible, coherent, and credible, while decision-makers selectively interpret these claims through institutional expectations of readiness, risk, and merit. These evaluative negotiations accumulate across formal and informal interactions, shaping career trajectories before promotion decisions are made. By theorising intersectional identity negotiation as a relational and co-constructed process, the study recasts career progression as an institutional site of negotiated power, highlighting how practices reproduce or contest inequities in academia.