IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/bla/gender/v26y2019i6p772-788.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

‘If you put pressure on yourself to produce then that's your responsibility’: Mothers’ experiences of maternity leave and flexible work in the neoliberal university

Author

Listed:
  • Kate Huppatz
  • Kate Sang
  • Jemina Napier

Abstract

Women remain underrepresented in senior positions within universities and report barriers to career progression. Drawing on the concepts of Foucault and Bourdieu, with an emphasis on technologies of the self, this article aims to understand mothers’ academic career experiences. Interviews were conducted with 35 non‐STEMM (science, technology, engineering, mathematics and medicine) academics in Scotland and Australia, to reveal the gender dimensions of parents’ academic careers, in neoliberal university contexts. The data suggest that there are tensions between organizational policies, such as maternity leave and flexible work, and the contemporary demands of academic labour. New managerial discourses which individualize and make use of moral systems are particularly effectual in driving women to take up marketized research activity and compromise leave entitlements.

Suggested Citation

  • Kate Huppatz & Kate Sang & Jemina Napier, 2019. "‘If you put pressure on yourself to produce then that's your responsibility’: Mothers’ experiences of maternity leave and flexible work in the neoliberal university," Gender, Work and Organization, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 26(6), pages 772-788, June.
    • Handle: RePEc:bla:gender:v:26:y:2019:i:6:p:772-788
    DOI: 10.1111/gwao.12314
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1111/gwao.12314
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1111/gwao.12314?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Thais França & Filipa Godinho & Beatriz Padilla & Mara Vicente & Lígia Amâncio & Ana Fernandes, 2023. "“Having a family is the new normal”: Parenting in neoliberal academia during the COVID‐19 pandemic," Gender, Work and Organization, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 30(1), pages 35-51, January.
    2. Lalarukh Ejaz & Vadim Grinevich & Mine Karatas‐Ozkan, 2023. "Women's informal entrepreneurship through the lens of institutional voids and institutional logics," Gender, Work and Organization, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 30(4), pages 1254-1272, July.
    3. Jennifer C. Davis & Eric Ping Hung Li & Mary Stewart Butterfield & Gino A. DiLabio & Nithi Santhagunam & Barbara Marcolin, 2022. "Are we failing female and racialized academics? A Canadian national survey examining the impacts of the COVID‐19 pandemic on tenure and tenure‐track faculty," Gender, Work and Organization, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 29(3), pages 703-722, May.
    4. Laurie Cohen & Joanne Duberley & Beatriz Adriana Bustos Torres, 2023. "Experiencing Gender Regimes: Accounts of Women Professors in Mexico, the UK and Sweden," Work, Employment & Society, British Sociological Association, vol. 37(2), pages 525-544, April.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:bla:gender:v:26:y:2019:i:6:p:772-788. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.blackwellpublishing.com/journal.asp?ref=0968-6673 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.