The changing academic workplace: Public and private transformations (original) (raw)

2005, Journal of Australian Studies

The workplace is changing from primarily being a site of production to one focused on knowledge creation, where there has been a re-engineering of work in what has been termed post-Fordism. 1 This changing workplace has experienced what some term a feminisation, as women have been entering the labour market in increasing numbers. 2 As Ian Watson, John Buchanan, Iain Campbell and Chris Briggs highlight in their recent book, Fragmented Futures, changing workplace participation has had both positive and negative effects. 3 Indeed, with all the talk about feminist theorising, workplace reform and changing societal norms, it would be expected that much has changed for Australian women over the past twenty-five years. Certainly, if one follows the commentary of certain sections of the media, one could be forgiven for thinking that perhaps gender reforms had, in fact, gone too far, with women supposedly taking jobs from men. Also, the argument is regularly made that gender is no longer an issue in contemporary Australia. 4 This change also plays out in the university workplace, where economic rationalism and global competitiveness are now firmly entrenched in university discourses. 5 Anna Yeatman asserts that restructuring within universities is dominated by market-orientated economic cultures of action and laissez-faire ideology because universities need to respond effectively to ongoing sociocultural change and complexity. 6 For Milton University (MU), a pseudonym for a regional Australian university, this included the introduction of information and communication technologies, the restructuring of faculties, mass marketing to international students, changing employment patterns to hire more casual, contract and part-time staff, and a focus on vocational degrees. But as Jeremy Rifkin suggests, it is not enough to introduce new technologies in response to the postindustrial or post-capitalist workplace; rather, there needs to be a re-organisation of institutional structures-the university being one such site-and a reevaluation of what is means to be a worker in the new knowledge economy. 7 This article draws on research carried out as part of my PhD thesis, where I used experiences related to me by four academic women who worked at MU in order to focus on the ways in which discourses circulating within this particular campus shape the performances and discursive positionings of these women-Veronica, Tamaly, Alice and Madonna (the names are fictional and were chosen by the women to represent themselves)-and how, in turn, these women negotiated these discourses. This research is therefore located in a qualitative paradigm that combines the use of a grounded theory approach 8 and a discourse/ textual analysis. 9 The use of a grounded theory approach enabled me to form or build theory from lived experience and present the voices of the women. Multiple data sources were used, including two formal interviews with each participant, numerous informal conversations with these women at various meetings, functions and seminars, peer debriefings with other academics, both male and