In the era of global competition, academic institutions are increasingly being managed as efficient organizations where early career academics are the most vulnerable group in the academic hierarchy. We use gender budgeting to deconstruct the financial and managerial processes and procedures in a selected academic institution in Iceland. Drawing on multiple data collection methods, we argue that new managerialism enhances the precarious position of early career academics, especially women and those in the more feminized fields. Furthermore, we show that the system's bias in favour of so‐called hard science generates gendered consequences for early career academics. We demonstrate this structural gender bias in each of the first three stages of an academic career: PhD, postdoc and other temporary positions, and assistant professorship. By highlighting the gendered consequences of new managerialism, we want to direct attention to the need to include a gender perspective in the budgeting and all the decision‐making processes in academic institutions.

It is suggested that the realization of work–life balance policies at the University of Iceland is compromised by an emphasis on neoliberal notions of growth and performance measurements in the form of new public management strategies. This is sustained by overt and covert incentive mechanisms, which in turn create a range of different gendered implications for academic staff. The results from semi-structured interviews suggest that while this tension field affects all academic staff, it is generally less favourable to women than to men. If women were granted time for the sake of family obligations, they risked a setback in their academic career due to decreased research activity. Women tended to view academic flexibility as an opportunity to engage in domestic responsibilities more so than men; and male interviewees tended to view the prioritization of family as a choice, while women tended to view it as a condition.

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