Introduction
Career negotiation research has predominantly examined salary and wage negotiations, consistently highlighting the disadvantages women face in these contexts (Alt, Wax, Brush & Magalona, Reference Alt, Wax, Brush and Magalona2024; Bowles, Thomason & Bear, Reference Bowles, Thomason and Bear2019; Lükemann & Abendroth, Reference Lükemann and Abendroth2024; Stepleman et al., Reference Stepleman, Coleman, Brady, Yi, Leggio, Zimmerman and McCall2024). Within this literature, negotiations are typically framed as instances of relational claim-making, in which employees seek to access organisational resources – such as pay, positions, or development opportunities – while organisational actors evaluate the legitimacy of these claims in relation to established classifications and hierarchies and prevailing norms of merit and performance (Lükemann & Abendroth, Reference Lükemann and Abendroth2024). While this work has generated important insights into gender differences in negotiation outcomes, it remains narrowly focused on compensation and individual negotiation behaviour.
In academic contexts, however, career conversations are embedded within formalised career progression and promotion practices, representing more complex negotiations that extend well beyond wages (Donmanige, Almeida, Frino & Middleton, Reference Donmanige, Almeida, Frino and Middleton2025; Ghamrawi, Ghamrawi & Alshaer, Reference Ghamrawi, Ghamrawi and Alshaer2024; Stepleman et al., Reference Stepleman, Coleman, Brady, Yi, Leggio, Zimmerman and McCall2024; Torbor, Sarpong, Maclean & Fletcher, Reference Torbor, Sarpong, Maclean and Fletcher2025). Such conversations constitute recurring institutional encounters in which academics and decision-makers negotiate not only progression but also the legitimacy, coherence, and value of academic identities. These negotiations are particularly consequential for STEM women academics, a context characterised by persistent gender segregation across national systems, including Australia, despite long-standing policy interventions (Almukhambetova, Reference Almukhambetova, Kuzhabekova, Durrani and Kataeva2025; Avolio & Cajo, Reference Avolio and Cajo2024; Corson & González-Morales, Reference Corson and González-Morales2024). Understanding career progression in STEM academia therefore, requires attending to negotiation as a relational and institutional process through which careers are evaluated, regulated, and shaped (Bowyer et al., Reference Bowyer, Deitz, Jamison, Taylor, Gyengesi, Ross and Dune2022; Christian, Johnstone, Larkins & Wright, Reference Christian, Johnstone, Larkins and Wright2023; Ross, Scanes, Poronnik, Coates & Locke, Reference Ross, Scanes, Poronnik, Coates and Locke2022).
Existing studies emphasise individual negotiation strategies and gender differences in outcomes. Instead, this paper fundamentally departs from prior work on gender and career negotiations (Alt et al., Reference Alt, Wax, Brush and Magalona2024; Bowles, Thomason & Bear, Reference Bowles, Thomason and Bear2019; Holliday et al., Reference Holliday, Griffith, De Castro, Stewart, Ubel and Jagsi2015; Lükemann & Abendroth, Reference Lükemann and Abendroth2024; Stepleman et al., Reference Stepleman, Coleman, Brady, Yi, Leggio, Zimmerman and McCall2024), by advancing the premise that promotion conversations as relational, co-constructed encounters between STEM women academics and institutional actors responsible for career progression decisions (herein decision-makers). These decision-makers include Heads of Schools and Deans within STEM academia. We extend negotiation scholarship by theorising intersectional identity negotiation as a multilevel institutional process unfolding within these encounters. Intersectional identity negotiation is defined as the influence that socially constructed and situated work-identity intersections have on how relationship partners – targets and perceivers – establish agreements about ‘who is who’ within workplace relationships (Donmanige, Almeida & Frino, Reference Donmanige, Almeida and Frino2024). In doing so, the study reveals the power-laden mechanisms through which academic careers are negotiated and shaped. The subsequent sections present the existing literature on intersectional identity negotiation, including the methodology, findings, discussion, limitations, and prospective directions.
Intersectional identity negotiation in institutional career progression contexts
Intersectional identity negotiation draws on foundational work in identity negotiation theory (Swann, Johnson & Bosson, Reference Swann, Johnson and Bosson2009; Ting-Toomey, Reference Ting-Toomey and Kim2017) and research on intersectional networks of identity negotiation (Compton-Lilly, Papoi, Venegas, Hamman & Schwabenbauer, Reference Compton-Lilly, Papoi, Venegas, Hamman and Schwabenbauer2017). Identity negotiation is the process through which ‘relationship partners reach agreements regarding “who is who” in their relationship at work’ (Swann et al., Reference Swann, Johnson and Bosson2009, p. 82). These negotiated agreements guide interpersonal expectations and behaviours, functioning as an ‘interpersonal glue’ within workplace relationships (Swann & Bosson, Reference Swann, Bosson, Pervin, John and Robins2008; Swann et al., Reference Swann, Johnson and Bosson2009). Identity negotiation is inherently relational and dyadic, involving targets and perceivers. Targets seek affirmation of their self-views, while perceivers – often individuals in positions of authority – apply role-based expectations that shape how identities are recognised and treated (Swann & Bosson, Reference Swann, Bosson, Trusz and Bąbel2016). As such, identity negotiation is not an internal process alone but one shaped by external validation, interactional cues, and asymmetrical power relations, including verbal and non-verbal communication (Ting-Toomey, Reference Ting-Toomey and Kim2017).
Despite its relational orientation, existing identity negotiation research remains constrained in two important ways. First, its predominant focus on singular or binary identity dimensions – most commonly gender or race – rather than how multiple identities are negotiated simultaneously (Armstrong & Mitchell, Reference Armstrong and Mitchell2017; Donmanige, Almeida & Frino, Reference Donmanige, Almeida and Frino2024; Meister, Sinclair & Jehn, Reference Meister, Sinclair and Jehn2017). Second, limited attention is given to institutional contexts in which identity negotiation unfolds under formalised evaluation, hierarchical authority, and career-related consequences. As a result, little is known about how STEM women academics negotiate intersecting identities within career progression processes that are not only relational but also explicitly evaluative and consequential (Anthony & Soontiens, Reference Anthony and Soontiens2022; Enache, Sallan, Simo & Fernandez, Reference Enache, Sallan, Simo and Fernandez2011; Latif, Cukier, Gagnon & Chraibi, Reference Latif, Cukier, Gagnon and Chraibi2018; Lokatt, Holgersson, Lindgren, Packendorff & Hagander, Reference Lokatt, Holgersson, Lindgren, Packendorff and Hagander2023).
Compton-Lilly et al. (Reference Compton-Lilly, Papoi, Venegas, Hamman and Schwabenbauer2017) extend identity negotiation scholarship through their concept of ‘intersectional networks of identity negotiation’, revealing how children from immigrant families actively and strategically negotiate language, gender, race, nationality, and technological engagement. Importantly, their work shows that identity negotiation is not limited to isolated identity dimensions but involves navigating complex, intersecting configurations shaped by social structure (2017, p. 115).
Extending this insight to organisational contexts, the present study uses intersectional identity negotiation to examine how STEM women academics and decision-makers of career progression negotiate socially constructed and situated work–identity intersections during career progression conversations. We explore and unravel the nuances of career progression negotiations to draw out the often overlooked yet critical components of these negotiations and their implications for women’s career progression.
Intersectional identity negotiation captures how STEM reconcile social identities (e.g., gender, ethnicity, sexuality) with situated work identities (e.g., disciplinary affiliation, organisational role, performance history) under conditions of institutional power. Crucially, identity negotiation in this formulation is not merely interpersonal but embedded within organisational structures, evaluative regimes, and career timelines. Identity narratives do not unfold in linear or neutral ways; rather, they are shaped by temporal disruptions and institutional expectations. Temporal markers – such as career stages, life transitions, and promotion cycles – intersect with systemic power dynamics, where implicit biases and structural inequities intensify the challenges, women face in aligning personal aspirations with organisational norms. Intersectional identity negotiation is therefore embedded in intersecting temporal and institutional power relations that shape not only identity recognition but access to career progression itself.
Power relations and institutional evaluation in intersectional identity negotiation
Intersectional power relations – defined as the layered and compounding effects of institutionalised norms tied to race, gender, class, and other identity dimensions – influence the perception of decision-makers and the way they interpret, legitimate, or even constrain identity claims (Arifeen & Syed, Reference Arifeen and Syed2020; Kele, Cassell, Ford & Watson, Reference Kele, Cassell, Ford and Watson2022; Liani, Nyamongo, Pulford & Tolhurst, Reference Liani, Nyamongo, Pulford and Tolhurst2021). More distinctly, during career progression negotiations, these interpretive processes render the promotion conversations as sites of identity evaluation, rather than neutral assessment. That is, our paper points to the power relations, positing that decisions about readiness, merit, and risk are inseparable from judgements about whose identities are perceived as coherent, credible, and institutionally aligned.
Within these power-laden encounters, women academics often develop counter-narratives that challenge dominant definitions of competence, commitment, and success. Counter-narratives function as mechanisms for resisting exclusionary frameworks and legitimising subjugated knowledges and lived experiences (Abdellatif, Gatto, O’Shea & Yarrow, Reference Abdellatif, Gatto, O’Shea and Yarrow2024; Bamberg & Andrews, Reference Bamberg and Andrews2004; Ibourk, Hughes & Mathis, Reference Ibourk, Hughes and Mathis2022; Kraehe, Reference Kraehe2015; Yates & Skinner, Reference Yates and Skinner2021). Their intersection with intersectional identity negotiation lies in their shared capacity to disrupt essentialist assumptions and amplify marginalised voices (Ibourk, Hughes & Mathis, Reference Ibourk, Hughes and Mathis2022). However, the literature also recognises that counter-narratives carry a dual potential. While enabling agency and resistance, they potentially also individualise systemic problems, inadvertently reinforcing institutional inequalities by reframing structural barriers as personal challenges (Abdellatif et al., Reference Abdellatif, Gatto, O’Shea and Yarrow2024; Gonzales & Terosky, Reference Gonzales and Terosky2020; Yates & Skinner, Reference Yates and Skinner2021). This tension underscores the complexity of intersectional identity negotiation within institutional career progression processes, and the need to explore this further.
The distinctions in Table 1 clarify why a standard identity negotiation lens is necessary but not sufficient for theorising career progression negotiations in STEM academia.
Conceptual distinctions between identity negotiation and intersectional identity negotiation
As synthesised in Table 1, identity negotiation theory powerfully explains how workplace actors arrive at interactional agreements about ‘who is who’, yet it can understate how such agreements are shaped by institutionalised evaluation, hierarchical authority, and the cumulative career consequences attached to repeated negotiations (Blair & Liu, Reference Blair and Liu2020; Donmanige, Almeida & Frino, Reference Donmanige, Almeida and Frino2024; Li, Zhang & Harzing, Reference Li, Zhang, Harzing, Chavan and Taksa2021; Winkler & Kristensen, Reference Winkler and Kristensen2021). Intersectional identity negotiation addresses this limitation by foregrounding how multiple, intersecting identities are simultaneously rendered visible, credible, or risky within institutional career systems, and how these judgements are mediated through decision-makers’ interpretive discretion and organisational norms (Donmanige, Almeida & Frino, Reference Donmanige, Almeida and Frino2024). Importantly, intersectional identity negotiation reframes career progression negotiation not as a discrete episode (e.g. a single promotion conversation) but as a process that accumulates across everyday workload allocation, opportunity access, and post-outcome feedback – encounters through which legitimacy and promotability are iteratively constructed. This processual framing is particularly salient in STEM academia, where meritocratic ideals coexist with opaque evaluative practices, making identity negotiation both consequential and unevenly accessible. Accordingly, the present study adopts intersectional identity negotiation as its central theoretical lens to examine how women academics and decision-makers of career progression co-construct career trajectories through negotiation.
All-in-all, the literature positions career progression negotiations in STEM academia as institutional encounters in which intersecting identities are actively negotiated between women academics and decision-makers of career progression. Promotion conversations are not neutral evaluations but relational, power-infused negotiations through which actors seek to establish coherent and legitimate understandings of ‘who is who’ within academic hierarchies. By integrating negotiation scholarship with intersectional identity negotiation, this study conceptualises career progression as a multilevel, co-constructed process shaped by identity, power, temporality, and institutional authority, rather than as a series of isolated or procedurally neutral decisions. Against this backdrop, the paper addresses the following research question:
How do STEM women academics and decision-makers of career progression engage in intersectional identity negotiation?
Methods
This article examines career progression negotiations as a relational organisational process, drawing on interview data generated with women academics and decision-makers in Australian STEM faculties. The analysis focuses on two analytically distinct but relationally connected stakeholder groups: 32 STEM women academics at mid-to-senior career levels and 18 decision-makers (see Supplementary materials for participant demographics), including Heads of Schools, Deans, and senior academic leaders across 14 STEM faculties. While the broader project generated multiple lines of inquiry, this paper is uniquely oriented toward understanding career progression negotiations as multilevel, co-constructed encounters. Accordingly, the study design foregrounds analytic triangulation across stakeholder positions, rather than privileging a single participant group (Flick, Reference Flick, Antony and Kathy2019; Jack & Raturi, Reference Jack and Raturi2006; Leech & Onwuegbuzie, Reference Leech and Onwuegbuzie2007; Lewis & Grimes, Reference Lewis and Grimes1999; Ligorio, Venturelli, Rosato & Campo, Reference Ligorio, Venturelli, Rosato and Campo2025). Constructivist grounded theory (CGT) was employed not to generate a single-population account of lived experience, but to support comparative, relational analysis of how career progression negotiations are constructed, evaluated, and enacted across institutional positions (Charmaz, Reference Charmaz, Morse, Bowers, Charmaz, Clarke, Corbin, Porr and Stern2021; Kassam, Marcellus, Clark & O’Mahony, Reference Kassam, Marcellus, Clark and O’Mahony2020). In contrast to applications of CGT that centre lived experience within a single population, this study mobilised CGT as a comparative and relational analytic strategy, enabling systematic examination of how the same career progression negotiations were narrated, interpreted, and evaluated across institutional positions (Aldiabat & Le Navenec, Reference Aldiabat and Le Navenec2018; Constantinou, Georgiou & Perdikogianni, Reference Constantinou, Georgiou and Perdikogianni2017; Miller, Le Dé & Hore, Reference Miller, Le Dé and Hore2025). This orientation aligns with the study’s focus on negotiation, identity evaluation, and power, which are inherently relational phenomena unfolding across individual-institutional interfaces.
Methodological distinctiveness
Although the data derive from a larger project, the methodological contribution of this paper lies in its explicit movement beyond a single-stakeholder lens toward a systemic, relational analysis of career progression. By analysing STEM women academics’ and decision-makers’ accounts as relationally interdependent interpretations of shared negotiation spaces, the study departs from approaches that locate negotiation competence, success, or failure primarily within individual actors. Instead, it conceptualises career progression as an organisational process produced through interaction between institutional authority, identity claims, and evaluative discretion (Ristad, Østvik, Horghagen, Kvam & Witsø, Reference Ristad, Østvik, Horghagen, Kvam and Witsø2024). This multistakeholder design enables examination of how legitimacy, readiness, and promotability are jointly constructed across roles, rather than assumed to be stable attributes of individuals (Köhler, Reference Köhler2024; Troth & Guest, Reference Troth and Guest2020). Analytically, it allows the study to capture how decision-makers’ interpretations of institutional standards intersect with women academics’ identity narratives, producing negotiated outcomes that cannot be explained through either perspective alone (Lindqvist & Forsberg, Reference Lindqvist and Forsberg2023; Ristad et al., Reference Ristad, Østvik, Horghagen, Kvam and Witsø2024). In doing so, the study responds to calls in organisational scholarship to theorise careers as systemic, negotiated processes rather than individualised trajectories, particularly in contexts characterised by hierarchical evaluation and inequality (Flick, Reference Flick, Antony and Kathy2019; Makri & Neely, Reference Makri and Neely2021).
Data sources and relational triangulation strategy
Ethical approval for this research was obtained from the Human Research Ethics Committee of the first author’s affiliated institution. The dataset comprises semi-structured interviews conducted between 2023 and 2024 with women academics and decision-makers working in STEM disciplines across Australian universities. Rather than treating these interviews as parallel or corroborative datasets, the analysis conceptualised them as relational vantage points on shared organisational processes. Women academics’ accounts provided insight into how career progression negotiations were experienced, anticipated, and interpreted, while decision-makers’ accounts illuminated how institutional norms, evaluative criteria, and discretionary judgements were mobilised within the same negotiation spaces. Triangulation was therefore enacted analytically rather than procedurally (Caretta & Pérez, Reference Caretta and Pérez2019; Jack & Raturi, Reference Jack and Raturi2006; Thurmond, Reference Thurmond2001; Tobin & Begley, Reference Tobin and Begley2004). Specifically, the research design leveraged cross-positional comparison to examine convergence, divergence, and asymmetry in how negotiation encounters were constructed. This enabled identification of moments where identity claims advanced by women academics aligned with, conflicted with, or were reframed through institutional logics articulated by decision-makers (Bogna, Raineri & Dell, Reference Bogna, Raineri and Dell2020; Creswell & Creswell, Reference Creswell and Creswell2023). By triangulating across these perspectives, the analysis moved beyond validation of accounts toward a relational explanation of how career outcomes are co-produced (Flick, Reference Flick, Antony and Kathy2019; Makri & Neely, Reference Makri and Neely2021).
Analytical procedure
Interview transcripts were analysed using NVivo software following Charmaz’s iterative CGT framework, incorporating initial, focused, and theoretical coding (Charmaz, Reference Charmaz, Morse, Bowers, Charmaz, Clarke, Corbin, Porr and Stern2021). Initial coding prioritised participants’ language to capture how negotiations, evaluations, and identity positioning were described across both groups. Focused coding then identified recurrent interactional patterns within and across stakeholder accounts, particularly in relation to promotion conversations, role negotiations, feedback exchanges, and assessments of readiness and risk. Theoretical coding was oriented toward integrating these patterns into a multilevel explanation of career progression negotiations (Carmichael & Cunningham, Reference Carmichael and Cunningham2017; Charmaz & Thornberg, Reference Charmaz and Thornberg2021; Cunningham & Carmichael, Reference Cunningham and Carmichael2017). Abductive reasoning played a central role in this phase, allowing the research team to move iteratively between empirical observations and emerging conceptual insights regarding intersectional identity negotiation and institutional judgement (Bryant, Reference Bryant2017; Bryant & Charmaz, Reference Bryant and Charmaz2019; Flach & Kakas, Reference Flach, Kakas, Flach and Kakas2000; Themelis, Sime & Thornberg, Reference Themelis, Sime and Thornberg2022; Thornberg & Dunne, Reference Thornberg, Dunne, Antony and Kathy2019). Constant comparison was applied not only within participant groups but across women academics’ and decision-makers’ accounts, ensuring that analytic claims reflected relational dynamics rather than isolated experiences. To support interpretive rigour, Hill et al.’s (Reference Hill, Knox, Thompson, Williams, Hess and Ladany2005) typology was used to assess the prevalence of emergent categories, classifying them as variant, typical, or general. This classification informed analytic sensitivity without functioning as a criterion for inclusion. The analytical priority remained on explicating how negotiations unfolded and how identity and power were negotiated within them, rather than on frequency alone. Throughout analysis, theoretical decisions were guided less by within-group thematic saturation and more by recurring asymmetries, misalignments, and negotiated meanings across stakeholder accounts, consistent with the paper’s focus on identity-evaluative encounters (Bayuo, Wong, Li, Lu & Wong, Reference Bayuo, Wong, Li, Lu and Wong2025; Charmaz & Thornberg, Reference Charmaz and Thornberg2021; Lindqvist & Forsberg, Reference Lindqvist and Forsberg2023).
Post-analytic validation and scholarly engagement
Following initial theory development, emergent themes and conceptual relationships were subjected to post-analytic scrutiny through presentation and discussion with academic audiences. Preliminary findings were shared in research seminars and conference workshops with scholars specialising in careers, gender, and organisational studies. These engagements functioned as an analytic challenge rather than validation, prompting refinement of category boundaries, clarification of processual sequencing, and strengthening of theoretical claims. In particular, feedback from these scholarly exchanges informed the consolidation of negotiation-related themes and sharpened the articulation of intersectional identity negotiation as a multilevel process rather than an individual strategy. This iterative refinement enhanced analytical robustness and contributed to the internal coherence of the findings.
Reflexivity and analytical integrity
Reflexivity was embedded throughout the research process and was particularly salient given the study’s focus on asymmetrical power relations. The interdisciplinary research team comprised a doctoral researcher and three senior academics with backgrounds in psychology, management, industrial relations, and nursing, each bringing different forms of institutional proximity to the phenomena under study. Ongoing reflexive journaling, peer debriefings, and positionality discussions were used to interrogate how researchers’ own experiences within academia shaped analytic interpretations (Rodriguez & Ridgway, Reference Rodriguez and Ridgway2023; Yip, Reference Yip2023).
Rather than centring reflexivity on identity similarity or difference with participants, reflexive practice in this study focused on positional asymmetry and interpretive authority – both within the data and within the research process itself. This orientation was consistent with the paper’s conceptual framing of career progression negotiations as identity-evaluative encounters shaped by power and discretion.
Findings
The study examined how STEM women academics and institutional decision-makers involved in career progression engage in intersectional identity negotiation. The following content presents a selection of quotes and their analysis.
Negotiation intent: supportive practice or tokenistic gesture?
This theme examines career progression negotiation as a routine institutional practice that is nevertheless unevenly experienced and enacted. Across decision-makers’ accounts, negotiation is framed as supportive, proactive, and developmental. In contrast, women academics’ accounts reveal negotiation as a fragile and contingent site of identity negotiation, where legitimacy, readiness, and professional worth are unevenly recognised. Juxtaposing these accounts exposes a recurring tension between institutional intent and lived enactment, raising the question of whether negotiation enables genuine identity co-construction or functions as tokenistic inclusion.
Across decision-maker accounts, negotiation is described as an embedded leadership responsibility oriented toward identifying and uplifting women:
I had my team drop a list of all the women who would be eligible… proactively meeting them multiple times… putting in place the support to enable them to succeed. (DM1)
Here, negotiation is positioned as a structured institutional mechanism for talent development. However, the authority to initiate, structure, and legitimise negotiation resides firmly with decision-makers, shaping whose identities are recognised as eligible for development. From an identity negotiation perspective, this reveals that women are invited into negotiation on institutionally defined terms, raising the possibility that inclusion may be symbolic rather than substantively co-constructed.
Women academics’ accounts consistently complicate this framing:
I was offered things verbally… but once I asked them to put it in writing a lot of things never transpired. (SWA7)
Across such accounts, negotiated commitments lack durability unless formally sanctioned. Identity claims advanced through negotiation remain revocable, signalling that recognition is conditional rather than secured. For women academics navigating intersecting institutional expectations, this fragility discourages future negotiation and reshapes how professional worth is asserted.
Decision-makers also framed negotiation as relational and pedagogical:
It’s really just start searching for possible way forward… as a mentor… or coaching… to help the person come to a solution. (DM4)
While presented as collaborative, this framing positions decision-makers as interpretive authorities who define what constitutes a ‘viable’ pathway. Identity negotiation is therefore unevenly co-produced, with women’s aspirations filtered through institutional norms that do not always account for intersecting constraints related to care, migration, or career stage.
Women academics described the resulting ambiguity:
There was no real encouragement… I just kind of did it and had no idea what my chances were. (SWA12)
Across WA accounts, negotiation often occurs without clear institutional cues, transferring interpretive risk to individuals. Identity negotiation thus becomes anticipatory and emotionally charged, as women must infer how their claims will be evaluated without explicit validation.
Taken together, Theme 1 shows that negotiation is routinely invoked yet unevenly legitimised. While decision-makers articulate negotiation as supportive, women academics experience it as conditional and precarious. The divergence between intent and enactment suggests that negotiation can operate simultaneously as a genuine developmental opportunity and as a tokenistic gesture that leaves institutional authority over identity recognition intact.
Every day negotiations that make careers
This theme demonstrates that career progression is shaped well before promotion decisions through everyday negotiations over roles, workloads, time, and responsibilities. These negotiations operate as cumulative sites of intersectional identity negotiation, producing conditions under which women academics come to be recognised as legitimate, sustainable, and promotable – or conversely, as marginal, overextended, or risky. Rather than discrete exchanges, these negotiations form an ongoing process through which professional identities are incrementally shaped and evaluated.
Decision-makers commonly framed everyday negotiation as pragmatic alignment between individual contributions and institutional needs:
What are the expectations of the role… how can we look at the person’s portfolio… and highlight those bits that speak to their strengths. (DM11)
This framing positions negotiation as a process of selective visibility, in which particular aspects of an academic’s identity are foregrounded while others recede. Identity negotiation here does not centre on self-definition but on institutional recognisability: who can be rendered legible within dominant categories of value. Importantly, this interpretive work is controlled by decision-makers, embedding asymmetry into even routine negotiations and shaping whose identities can be sustained within the institution over time.
Women academics’ accounts reveal the corrective labour required to negotiate such conditions:
I directly raised that as an issue for equity and access… this shouldn’t be timetabled like this. (SWA3)
Across similar accounts, negotiation is prompted not by opportunity but by misalignment between institutional arrangements and lived realities. Identity negotiation involves asserting oneself as a legitimate organisational actor entitled to equitable conditions, rather than as an individual requesting accommodation. This corrective positioning is itself risky, as it requires challenging taken-for-granted institutional practices that implicitly privilege unencumbered availability.
Negotiation competence was unevenly distributed and informally learned:
One of my mates… didn’t negotiate anything… she didn’t even know what her teaching load was. (SWA11)
This account highlights how access to negotiation is structured by tacit knowledge rather than transparent policy. Identity negotiation therefore operates through unequal familiarity with institutional rules, disadvantaging those whose socialisation into academic norms is interrupted by intersecting responsibilities or marginalised positions. Over time, such disparities accumulate, shaping who enters promotion processes with sustainable workloads and visible achievements.
These negotiations were also temporally extended:
It took… nearly six months to negotiate that position. (SWA11)
Extended negotiation underscores that identity negotiation is not episodic but durational, requiring sustained engagement with institutional actors and repeated justification of one’s circumstances. Temporal elongation amplifies power asymmetries, as women academics must remain responsive and compliant while awaiting outcomes, often absorbing additional labour in the interim. Identity negotiation thus becomes exhausting, shaping not only immediate roles but long-term perceptions of commitment and resilience.
Taken together, Theme 2 shows that everyday negotiations silently structure career trajectories by producing cumulative identity effects. These negotiations determine who arrives at promotion conversations as credible, rested, and institutionally aligned – and who arrives already marked by overload, delay, or fragility – directly conditioning the identity-evaluative encounters examined in Theme 3.
The promotion test – negotiating readiness, risk, and recognition
This theme examines promotion conversations as the most consequential identity-evaluative encounters in academic careers. Promotion negotiations constitute institutional moments where accumulated identity negotiations are formally interpreted, authorised, or withheld. Assessments of readiness, risk, and merit are inseparable from judgements about who can be recognised as legitimately promotable under existing institutional conditions.
Across decision-makers accounts, pre-promotion negotiation is framed as translation into institutional logic:
Mapping it best into what the committee is actually looking for. (DM11)
This framing positions promotion negotiation as an interpretive exercise in which decision-makers translate academic identities into committee-recognisable forms. Identity negotiation here is constrained by institutional templates of merit, privileging those whose trajectories align with dominant expectations. Authority over meaning rests with decision-makers, shaping which identity claims are rendered intelligible and credible.
Temporal judgement intensifies this evaluative process:
Are you ready for the recognition… or next year? (DM6)
Readiness is constructed as a future-oriented assessment that links recognition to anticipated capacity and availability. Promotion negotiation thus shifts responsibility onto women academics to self-regulate timing, aligning present claims with projected institutional demands. Intersectional identity negotiation becomes anticipatory, as women must assess how care responsibilities, workload histories, or non-linear trajectories may be read against implicit norms of uninterrupted productivity.
In some cases, identity negotiation was foreclosed altogether:
I would not let anybody go up if they weren’t going to get it. (DM5)
This statement reveals how gatekeeping operates not merely as advice but as institutional veto. While framed as protective, such interventions eliminate opportunities for women academics to test or contest definitions of readiness. Identity negotiation is thus curtailed at the threshold, reinforcing asymmetrical control over who may claim progression.
Women academics experienced these encounters as opaque and consequential:
Because I wasn’t named as the principal supervisor… I didn’t get it. (SWA11)
Across such accounts, informal evaluative norms override formal criteria, constraining the space for identity negotiation. Contesting feedback becomes an exercise in sensemaking rather than redress, highlighting how legitimacy is produced through unwritten rules that disadvantage those outside dominant institutional networks.
Women responded to these conditions through divergent identity negotiation strategies. Some sought to neutralise identity as a category of evaluation:
It’s causing a lot of identity crisis. (SWA5)
Here, distancing from identity reflects an attempt to preserve coherence and legitimacy in evaluative spaces that render identity risky. Others adopted assertive disclosure:
I’m gay, I’m queer… this is who I am. (SWA6)
This strategy reframes promotion negotiation as identity assertion rather than concealment, challenging institutional norms but also heightening exposure to evaluative risk. Together, these responses illustrate that intersectional identity negotiation in promotion contexts is not uniform but shaped by differential assessments of risk, safety, and recognisability.
Theme 3 demonstrates that promotion negotiations function as decisive institutional tests where identity negotiations accumulated over time are formally adjudicated. These encounters shape not only progression outcomes but future orientations toward negotiation, ambition, and institutional belonging.
Strategic engagement, resistance, and the limits of negotiation
This theme examines how women academics and decision-makers of career progression engage strategically with negotiation in the aftermath of repeated identity-evaluative encounters. Building on Themes 1–3, negotiation here is no longer about entry into institutional conversations or formal assessment of readiness, but about how actors adapt to, resist, or accommodate the cumulative identity consequences produced through those processes. Negotiation emerges as a conditional practice that can enable repositioning and resistance, while simultaneously reproducing institutional power through normative expectations about appropriate behaviour, collegiality, and credibility.
Women academics described learning to engage strategically with negotiation by refining how their identities were presented and interpreted within institutional contexts:
There’s different ways of selling the same information… thinking strategically. (SWA11)
This account reveals negotiation as interpretive labour rather than straightforward self-advocacy. Identity negotiation here involves anticipating how one’s claims will be read by evaluators and adjusting self-presentation accordingly. Such a strategy reflects adaptation to asymmetric interpretive authority, where legitimacy depends less on the substance of one’s achievements and more on their alignment with institutional frames of value. Importantly, this form of strategic engagement is not neutral: it requires women academics to continually monitor how ambition, assertiveness, or difference may be read against gendered and professional norms.
Strategic negotiation also became more viable when external validation altered how identity claims were received:
I went to my head of school… I’ve had this offer… she said… I can put you up a couple of steps. (SWA11)
Here, the external offer functions as a legitimacy amplifier, reconfiguring the negotiation encounter by repositioning the academic as institutionally valuable rather than merely aspirational. Intersectional identity negotiation in this context is contingent rather than intrinsic: recognition is secured through market signals rather than internal institutional acknowledgement alone. This underscores how negotiation capacity is unevenly distributed, privileging those with access to external mobility and reinforcing stratified career outcomes.
Beyond individual strategy, women academics described the emergence of peer-based practices of refusal as a form of everyday resistance:
Just say… unfortunately I’m unavailable… she started saying no. (SWA13)
This account illustrates refusal as socially learned identity negotiation. The phrasing ‘unfortunately I’m unavailable’ is not simply a boundary but a carefully calibrated identity claim that signals professionalism and legitimacy while resisting excessive availability. That such practices spread through peer interaction highlights how resistance is relational rather than individual, yet still constrained by shared understandings of what constitutes acceptable academic conduct.
Decision-makers’ accounts clarify why refusal is experienced as risky and tightly managed:
There’s different ways of saying no… you don’t want to close any doors… the swinging door. (DM5)
This framing reveals how power operates through defining not whether refusal is allowed, but how it must be performed. The ‘swinging door’ metaphor underscores that negotiation is embedded in ongoing relational evaluation, where present refusals shape future access to opportunities. Intersectional identity negotiation matters here because the margin for acceptable refusal is uneven; those whose legitimacy is already fragile face greater reputational risk when declining work.
Decision-makers further emphasised the long-term identity implications of refusal:
If you say no… you close the door and people don’t ask again. (DM5)
Here, refusal is interpreted as durable identity information rather than a situational response. Negotiation thus extends beyond immediate workload management into the construction of reputational narratives about who is dependable, collegial, or promotable. For women academics negotiating intersecting expectations, such reputational encoding can be particularly punitive, as legitimacy is often provisional and must be continually reaffirmed.
Finally, some decision-makers framed negotiation behaviour through gendered assumptions about disposition:
Women tend to be brought up to be more… willing to talk about compromises. (DM11)
While presented as descriptive, this framing naturalises negotiation styles and obscures institutional responsibility for inequality. By interpreting compromise as an inherent disposition rather than a constrained response, such narratives reinforce normative expectations that women should negotiate in accommodating ways. Intersectional identity negotiation is thus shaped not only by formal rules but by interpretive lenses through which behaviour is judged as appropriate or deviant.
Taken together, Theme 4 shows that negotiation operates simultaneously as a site of agency and a mechanism of constraint. Women academics engage in strategic identity negotiation through adaptation, leverage-seeking, and calibrated refusal, yet these practices remain bounded by institutional norms that govern how negotiation should look, sound, and feel. Power resides not only in decision-making authority but in defining the acceptable terms of negotiation itself. In this way, negotiation becomes the means through which women academics manage the consequences of earlier identity-evaluative encounters while navigating the ongoing conditions of institutional belonging.
Discussion
This study demonstrates that career progression in STEM academia is not governed by individual merit or negotiation skill alone, but is actively produced through relational, institutionally mediated negotiation encounters between women academics and decision-makers of career progression. By foregrounding intersectional identity negotiation as the central organising process, the findings redefine academic career progression as a cumulative, power-laden organisational process, rather than a linear or procedurally neutral pathway. In doing so, the study directly challenges dominant meritocratic accounts of academic careers, revealing how career progression is co-constructed through ongoing identity evaluation embedded within organisational structures.
Consistent with organisational scholarship that conceptualises careers as multilevel and relationally constituted processes, the findings show that negotiation unfolds across individual–institutional interactions rather than residing solely within individual agency. However, this study advances that literature by showing that negotiation is not merely a background condition of career development, but the primary organisational mechanism through which career progression is actively evaluated, authorised, and constrained over time. Women academics negotiate the visibility, legitimacy, and coherence of their identities across intersecting expectations related to gender, career stage, care, and institutional norms, while decision-makers simultaneously negotiate institutional imperatives associated with performance, risk management, and reputational accountability. These negotiations are relationally co-constructed yet structurally asymmetrical, shaped by unequal access to authority, institutional knowledge, and interpretive discretion. Career progression thus emerges not as the outcome of isolated individual action, but as an organisational process produced through ongoing interaction between identity claims and institutional judgement.
Crucially, the findings demonstrate that negotiation is cumulative, longitudinal process, rather than rather than as a series of isolated or episodic events. As shown in Themes 1 and 2, everyday negotiations over workload allocation, role expectations, service commitments, and availability operate as formative sites of identity negotiation and contestation. Through these everyday organisational interactions, academics’ professional identities are incrementally shaped, legitimised, or constrained in ways that subsequently structure and condition later evaluative encounters. These ostensibly mundane organisational practices play a powerful yet often invisible role in determining who enters promotion conversations already positioned as credible, sustainable, and aligned with institutional norms and expectations. They silently shape who arrives at promotion conversations as credible, sustainable, and institutionally aligned. This finding extends organisational scholarship by revealing how informal and routine practices function as preconditions for formal evaluation, underscoring the longitudinal and processual nature of career progression.
Themes 3 and 4 further show that promotion conversations operate as identity-evaluative encounters in which accumulated identity negotiations are formally interpreted and adjudicated. Assessments of readiness, risk, and merit are inseparable from judgments about who can be recognised as legitimately promotable. While negotiation can provide opportunities for agency and resistance, its emancipatory potential is constrained by institutional norms governing acceptable behaviour, timing, and self-presentation. Strategic engagement and refusal are viable only when enacted in institutionally legible ways, reinforcing the paradox that negotiation can simultaneously enable progression and reproduce inequality.
Taken together, the findings reposition negotiation not as a discrete tactic but as a central organisational mechanism through which careers are made, delayed, or redirected. Career progression emerges as an outcome of ongoing intersectional identity negotiation across multiple encounters, rather than a singular decision point or individual achievement.
Theoretical contributions
This study makes three interrelated theoretical contributions. First, advancing career and negotiation scholarship by reconceptualising career progression as a multi-stakeholder negotiation process rather than an individual strategy or merit-based outcome. In contrast to negotiation research that centres on individual behaviour, this study shows that careers are co-constructed through repeated institutional encounters in which identity, legitimacy, and advancement are negotiated (Crafford, Adams, Saayman & Vinkenburg, Reference Crafford, Adams, Saayman, Vinkenburg, Jansen and Roodt2015; Dickens, Reference Dickens2014; Kugler, Reif, Kaschner & Brodbeck, Reference Kugler, Reif, Kaschner and Brodbeck2018). This shifts analytical attention from what individuals negotiate to how organisational actors collectively shape career trajectories over time. The study brings to light further understanding of institutional regulation and its role in reinforcing – or disrupting – inequitable academic progression, particularly for women.
Second, advancing identity negotiation theory by theorising intersectional identity negotiation as a multilevel organisational process (Compton-Lilly et al., Reference Compton-Lilly, Papoi, Venegas, Hamman and Schwabenbauer2017; Ting-Toomey, Reference Ting-Toomey and Kim2017). Moving beyond dominant accounts that frame identity negotiation as a primarily dyadic or interactional phenomenon, the findings theorise identity negotiation as structurally embedded within institutional structures, temporal career regimes, and enduring power asymmetries. Intersectionality is treated as a peripheral or contextual moderator but as a constitutive mechanism through which identity claims are rendered intelligible, evaluated, constrained, or legitimised within career progression encounters. In doing so, the paper repositions identity negotiation as a dynamic process through which organisational inequalities are reproduced and contested over time.
Third, this study reframes promotion conversations as identity-evaluative encounters rather than neutral assessments (Donmanige et al., Reference Donmanige, Almeida, Frino and Middleton2025; Kharsan, Shree & Dange, Reference Kharsan, Shree and Dange2022; Restrepo Quintero, González Valles & Benítez Reyes, Reference Restrepo Quintero, González Valles and Benítez Reyes2025). These encounters function as sites where informal judgements of readiness, risk, and legitimacy operate alongside formal criteria. More so, promotion discussions are recast as arenas of negotiated power rather than objective judgment. By revealing how decision-makers exercise interpretive discretion within these interactions, the study challenges meritocratic assumptions and highlights the relational conditions under which advancement becomes possible.
Figure 1 synthesises these findings into a process model of Multi-Stakeholder Intersectional Identity Negotiation in Career Progression.
Multistakeholder intersectional identity negotiation in career progression.
Figure 1 illustrates career progression in STEM academia as a recursive, multilevel organisational process constituted through ongoing intersectional identity negotiation between women academics and decision-makers. At the individual level, women academics bring intersecting social identities and situated work identities into career systems, negotiating how ‘who I am’ is rendered visible, legitimate, and coherent. At the institutional level, decision-makers exercise interpretive discretion in translating institutional norms related to readiness, risk, and merit into situated judgements, while operating within reputational and organisational constraints. Theme 1 captures the institutional framing of negotiation intent (supportive practice versus tokenistic gesture), which shapes negotiation access and legitimacy conditions, including invitation to negotiate, clarity of expectations, durability of outcomes, and anticipated risk. These conditions structure subsequent career progression negotiation encounters, shown as central sites of intersectional identity negotiation encompassing cumulative everyday negotiations (Theme 2), promotion and readiness negotiations (Theme 3), and post-outcome and reputational negotiations (Theme 4). Career trajectories and outcomes (e.g. progression, delay, withdrawal, reputational standing) are shown as provisional and subject to reinterpretation, feeding back into future negotiation encounters through the recalibration of identity, legitimacy, and willingness to negotiate. The model highlights that career progression is not a linear or neutral process, but a co-constructed yet asymmetrical organisational process in which inequality emerges through the cumulative effects of negotiated identity evaluation over time.
Practical contributions
For institutions, the findings suggest that addressing inequity requires attention to the cumulative negotiation practices that precede formal promotion decisions (Probert, Reference Probert2005; van den Brink, Benschop & Jansen, Reference van den Brink, Benschop and Jansen2010). The findings highlight the need for HR leaders and academic institutions to move beyond individualised career development models (such as mentoring or negotiation training alone) and instead address systemic career systems and processes. Increasing transparency around how everyday negotiations over workload, service, and opportunity inform evaluative judgements may reduce interpretive asymmetries (Blalock & Stefanese-Yates, Reference Blalock and Stefanese-Yates2024; Misra, Kuvaeva, O’meara, Culpepper & Jaeger, Reference Misra, Kuvaeva, O’meara, Culpepper and Jaeger2021; van den Brink et al., Reference van den Brink, Benschop and Jansen2010). Institutions should also critically examine how informal practices and temporal expectations intersect with identity in shaping perceived readiness. The paper proposed adopting an integrated career framework that accounts for cumulative decision-making over time, rather than isolated promotion moments.
For decision-makers, the study highlights the importance of reflexivity in recognising how interpretive discretion actively shapes identity evaluation over time (Barrett & Barrett, Reference Barrett and Barrett2010; Epperson et al., Reference Epperson, Gouveia, Tabangin, Takiar, Howell, Altaye and Tang2020; Wilcox et al., Reference Wilcox, Koontz, Gau, Jasinski, Reinhart and Walters2025). Rather than positioning negotiation solely as guidance or gatekeeping, decision-makers may benefit from recognising how repeated negotiation encounters accumulate identity consequences that affect future engagement, confidence, and willingness to negotiate. To combat this, the paper proposes the development of bias-aware promotion and evaluation processes designed to recognise intersectional dynamics and avoid treating gender or other identities in isolation. For example, targeted training for decision makers, promotion panel members and academic leaders focused on how identity claims are interpreted and legitimised. and to recognise and mitigate informal judgements of readiness, risk, and fit.
For women academics, the findings underscore that career progression conversations are negotiated organisational encounters rather than neutral assessments (Gilbert, Allshouse & Skaznik-Wikiel, Reference Gilbert, Allshouse and Skaznik-Wikiel2019; Srikanth & Dey, Reference Srikanth and Dey2023; Womack et al., Reference Womack, Wood, House, Quinn, Thomas, McGee and Byars-Winston2020). While strategic engagement may support navigation of institutional expectations, the findings also highlight the structural limits of individual agency and the importance of collective and institutional responsibility for equity.
Importantly, while grounded in STEM academia, these insights are applicable to other professional and organisational contexts characterised by opaque progression criteria, discretionary evaluation, and cumulative performance assessment, such as professional services, healthcare, and public-sector organisations.
Limitations and future research directions
Several limitations of this study also point to productive avenues for future research. First, while the multistakeholder design enabled a relational analysis of career progression negotiations, the study remains situated within the context of Australian STEM academia. Although this setting offers a theoretically rich site due to its pronounced gender segregation, formalised promotion systems, and strong meritocratic discourse, institutional configurations and career norms may vary across national, disciplinary, and organisational contexts (Edwards, Reference Edwards2022). Future research could extend this framework to other academic systems or professional fields – such as professional services, healthcare, or public administration – to examine how intersectional identity negotiation unfolds under different regulatory regimes, labour markets, and evaluative cultures (Torbor et al., Reference Torbor, Sarpong, Maclean and Fletcher2025).
Second, the study relies on retrospective interview accounts, which capture participants’ interpretations and sensemaking rather than real-time interactional dynamics. While this approach is well suited to examining how negotiation encounters are remembered, narrated, and imbued with identity meaning over time, it cannot directly observe how identity claims are enacted, resisted, or reframed within live career conversations (Dempsey, Mansfield & MacCallum, Reference Dempsey, Mansfield and MacCallum2020). Future research could complement this approach through ethnographic observation, longitudinal shadowing, or the analysis of naturally occurring interactional data (e.g., promotion meetings or feedback sessions), enabling closer examination of the micro-interactional practices through which intersectional identity negotiation is accomplished.
Third, although the analysis foregrounds intersectional identity negotiation, the composition of the sample limits the extent to which specific intersections – such as race, disability, or sexuality – can be systematically compared across institutional contexts. Future studies could adopt purposive sampling strategies that centre particular intersectional positions or examine how different intersections become salient at distinct career stages. This would deepen understanding of how identity negotiation varies not only between women academics and decision-makers, but also among women academics occupying different social locations within the same institutional system (Peticca‐Harris & McKenna, Reference Peticca‐Harris and McKenna2013).
Finally, while this study conceptualises career progression as a cumulative and processual negotiation, it does not trace individual careers longitudinally. Future research could adopt longitudinal designs to examine how repeated negotiation encounters shape career trajectories over time, including how early experiences of recognition or constraint influence later willingness to negotiate, pursue promotion, or disengage from institutional pathways. Such work would further illuminate the temporal dynamics of intersectional identity negotiation and its long-term consequences for inequality, retention, and leadership representation (Hoyer & Steyaert, Reference Hoyer and Steyaert2015; Lundmark, Jonsson & Hansson, Reference Lundmark, Jonsson and Hansson2024).
These directions suggest that intersectional identity negotiation offers a generative framework for future organisational research. By extending analysis beyond individual strategies to the relational and institutional conditions under which careers are negotiated, future studies can continue to challenge meritocratic assumptions and advance more nuanced understandings of inequality in career progression.
Conclusion
This study demonstrates that career progression in STEM academia is not a neutral or individualised process, but a relational and institutionally embedded negotiation shaped through ongoing interactions between women academics and institutional decision-makers. By theorising intersectional identity negotiation as a multilevel organisational process, the study reveals how progression is co-constructed through power-laden encounters that extend well beyond formal promotion decisions. In repositioning promotion conversations as identity-evaluative encounters, this research challenges meritocratic assumptions and advances organisational scholarship on careers, negotiation, and identity. By offering a processual and relational account of career progression, the study foregrounds how organisational dynamics, institutional authority, and interpretive discretion shape progression outcomes over time. Importantly, the findings suggest that addressing inequity in academic careers requires more than formal policy reform; it demands sustained attention to the everyday organisational negotiations through which careers are continually made and remade, and through which power and inequality are reproduced or contested.
Supplementary material
The supplementary material for this article can be found at https://doi.org/10.1017/jmo.2025.10078.
Acknowledgments
The authors extend their sincere gratitude to all participants and to the anonymous reviewers for their thoughtful and constructive feedback. This study forms part of a doctoral project and was supported by a University of Wollongong Postgraduate Award scholarship and an International Postgraduate Tuition Award awarded to then doctoral candidate, Iresha Donmanige.
Competing interests
The authors declare none.
Dr Iresha Donmanige is an early-career researcher and academic in the School of Business at the University of Wollongong. Her research examines careers and marginalised groups at the intersection of critical management studies and vocational psychology. Iresha was awarded the Australian and New Zealand Academy of Management (ANZAM) Best Dissertation Award in 2025, which was sponsored by the Journal of Management & Organization, and the School of Business, University of Wollongong, HDR Research Excellence Award in 2024. In 2025, she received the Outstanding Reviewer Award from the Careers Division at the Academy of Management Annual Meeting. Her recent publication in Equality, Diversity and Inclusion: An International Journal (with Almeida and Frino, 2024) was featured in the journal’s Pride Month 2025 virtual issue.
Shamika Almeida is an Associate Professor in Management and Associate Dean (Equity, Diversity and Inclusion) in the Faculty of Business and Law, University of Wollongong, Australia. Her research examines gender equity, career progression, diversity and inclusion, workplace wellbeing and engagement, and leadership/employee voice – often in health and public-sector contexts. Recent publications appear in Gender, Work & Organization, Equality, Diversity and Inclusion: An International Journal, Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly, Career Development International, and Educational Management Administration & Leadership. She is a Senior Fellow of Advance HE and contributes to industry and community partnerships that translate research into inclusive organisational practice.
Dr Betty Frino is a Senior Lecturer in Human Resource Management and Management, and National Course Coordinator for the Bachelor of Business Administration in the Peter Faber Business School, Faculty of Law and Business, Australian Catholic University. Her research expertise includes gender at work, pay equity, wage bargaining, psychosocial safety and worker wellbeing, and employee engagement. She has published widely in peer-reviewed and practitioner journals, including the Asia Pacific Journal of Human Resource Management, the Journal of Industrial Relations, Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Journal, and International Journal of Educational Management. Her professional background combines academic scholarship with applied and policy research in employment relations and the higher education sector.
Associate Professor Rebekkah Middleton is an Associate Professor in Nursing and Associate Dean (Student Life) in the Faculty of Science, Medicine and Health, University of Wollongong, Australia. Her work centres on person-centred learning, teaching and practice—particularly leadership, healthcare workforce wellbeing, nursing curriculum, and care for older people in the community – with a strong emphasis on translating theory into practice. She has published in outlets such as the Journal of Advanced Nursing, Nurse Education in Practice, Journal of Evaluation in Clinical Practice, Nursing Open, and International Emergency Nursing. She serves on the editorial boards of the Journal of Clinical Nursing and the Journal of University Teaching & Learning Practice.
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