Meritocracy is a central normative ideal of academia. Professorship, as the pinnacle of academic careers embodies the meritocratic promise and is expected to be awarded solely on the basis of excellence in research and teaching (Graf, 2016). Yet, the conditions under which merit is measured and evaluated are far from neutral. Academia exemplifies a “greedy job” (Goldin, 2014, 2024), characterised by high workloads, expectations of constant availability, mobility and high performance (Afonso, 2016; Blome, 2023). Conditions that disadvantage caregivers, particularly women, by assuming an “ideal academic” free from care responsibilities (Glogowsky et al., 2025; Jessen et al., 2022; OECD, 2017). This paper investigates how far care obligations (have) shape(d) the scientific output of male and female professors and whether prevailing performance metrics implicitly reward availability over ability.

To answer this, we use unique data from the first wave of the DZHW-prof*panel (2022) which includes a representative sample of professors appointed between 2010 and 2022 in Germany, to examine how gender and parenthood shape academic output and career trajectories. Preliminary findings reveal a persistent gender gap in academic output, with women publishing less and acquiring less third-party funding than men. However, these differences do not reflect disparities in ability. Our results suggest, male and female professors are equally capable of producing high-quality research. Instead, substantial gender differences emerge in availability, particularly when intersecting with parenthood, as working hours and time resources diverge significantly. These results suggest that commonly accepted performance indicators are attainable only under gendered conditions, as availability significantly shapes performance of professors. Which calls their validity into question as neutral measures of academic excellence. These findings highlight the need to rethink performance expectations in academia and call for greater recognition of how care responsibilities shape academic careers and the metrics by which meritocratic ideals are evaluated.