In 2005, German legislation introduced the Excellence Initiative, which has not only altered the rationalities and subjectivities of academia but also produced new visibilities: on the one hand, the (young), emerging female scientist (McRobbie 2007) and on the other hand the “entrepreneurial universities” (Clark 1998) with a growing number of third space professionals (Whitchurch 2008) who – among other topics – administer and develop organizational policies concerning gender equality and emerging researchers’ careers. The relationship between gender equality, emerging researchers’ careers and excellence, however, is not one of unilateral understanding but ‘contested terrain’ where different discourses and rationalities fight for legitimation (Binner und Weber 2018). Where the ‘excellence’ discourse legitimizes competition and produces market-like behaviors, the demand for gender equality originates from the long tradition of the women’s movement in Germany since the 19th century where virtues such as solidarity and sisterhood were expressed. Yet, studies by Gill (2014) and Scharff (2011) point to individualizing discourse in the latest feminist movements that disguise structural inequalities and celebrate competition and individual achievement. This contribution looks at the ‘contested terrain’ of gender equality and excellence through the ‘eyes’ of third space professionals in the field of gender equality and young researchers in German academic organizations. From a Foucauldian discourse perspective, we regard them as discourse agents that have to navigate and combine these different discourses and thus produce organizational realities. But how are excellence and gender equality connected? Based on Foucault’s (1973) Archaeology of Knowledge and the question of “Who speaks?”, we analyze the organizational strategies and institutional programmatics of two German scientific organizations regarding gender equality and young researchers. Our empirical data stems from three ‘surfaces of emergence’: organizational websites, interviews with third space professionals as well as videographies. These approaches enable us to analyze the new order of visibilities: Does gender equality simply blend in into the excellence discourse? Or do we find contesting – and maybe even heterotopic (Foucault 1984; Adler and Weber 2019) – discourses? Can gender equality policies break the silence (Gill 2009) so that the volatile and precarious VUCA-Demia might after all allow space for subversive modes of change?

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