Oltre la neutralità: istituzioni accademiche e divario di genere

This article examines the persistent gender gap within Italian academic institutions as a structural phenomenon, challenging the rhetoric of neutrality that characterizes university norms, procedures, and organizational practices. Drawing on jurisprudential and legal-philosophical scholarship addressing gender issues, the contribution critically interrogates the principle of equality in its predominantly formal understanding, highlighting its inadequacy in effectively countering gender-based inequalities. From this perspective, the academic gender gap is interpreted as the outcome of an interplay between ostensibly neutral regulatory frameworks, consolidated organizational models, and symbolic and linguistic devices that reflect a still predominantly androcentric paradigm of the legal subject. Particular attention is devoted to the notion of institutional discrimination, to implicit biases shaping merit evaluation processes, and to the performative role of language in constructing and legitimizing power hierarchies within academic institutions. In its concluding section, the article explores both the transformative potential and the structural limits of selected preventive and remedial instruments adopted by universities, foremost among them Gender Equality Plans (GEPs). The analysis ultimately underscores the urgency of an integrated and critical approach capable of addressing the normative, organizational, and cultural structures that reproduce inequality, with a view to promoting substantive and effective equality within academic institutions.