We found a match
Your institution may have access to this item. Find your institution then sign in to continue.
- Title
"My entire career has been fixed term": Gender and precarious academic employment at a New Zealand university.
- Authors
Stringer, Rebecca; Smith, Dianne; Spronken-Smith, Rachel; Wilson, Cheryl
- Abstract
In neoliberal times the nature of academic employment in universities has shifted dramatically. Precarious (fixed-term and casual) academic employment has proliferated, continuing academic employment has become more scarce and a wide gap has opened between the conditions of work and career trajectories of academics in continuing positions--for whom a semblance of the tenure system remains intact--and the growing number of academics on temporary, insecure contracts, for whom the prospect of academic unemployment ever looms. International research indicates that this shift toward academic precarity is gendered, with academic women typically over-represented in precarious academic employment and under-represented in continuing positions and vice versa for academic men. To further our understanding of the way rising academic precarity and its greater impact on academic women have played out in Aotearoa/New Zealand, this article reports on academic perceptions and experiences of precarious academic employment at a New Zealand university. Statistical and inductive analysis of a mixed-method survey of 914 academic staff reveals extensive academic precarity at the case study institution, an over-representation of women in precarious employment, many more negative than positive experiences of precarious employment, and high motivation amongst precarious academics to gain secure employment.
- Subjects
NEW Zealand; ACADEMIC employment; PRECARIOUS employment; WOMEN in higher education; FIXED-term labor contracts; NEOLIBERALISM -- Social aspects; TENURE of college teachers; UNIVERSITIES &; colleges
- Publication
New Zealand Sociology, 2018, Vol 33, Issue 2, p169
- ISSN
0112-921X
- Publication type
Article