Images, ideals and constraints in times of neoliberal transformations: Reproduction and profession as conflicting or complementary spheres in academia?

Abstract

The article deals with structural, cultural and habitual concepts, principles and ideals of parenthood in the German academic working context. It focuses on social processes of transformation and reconfiguration of reproduction and profession, which means within work and family spheres and especially within academia in times of neoliberalism, economisation and globalisation. Discursive and biographical research results of two German research projects will be linked to trace current developments of gender relations concerning the compatibility of scientific work and family. Using an analytical governmental perspective, we reveal findings concerning the subject and identity formations of scientists and parents. The insights and conclusions obtained will be discussed and evaluated in terms of the interdependencies between the spheres of production and reproduction in neoliberalism.

Precarity, gender and care in the neoliberal academy

“…12–13, 20–21; UCU, , ). Labour markets and working conditions in science have deteriorated significantly also in Germany and in France though not to the same degree: in France, 65 per cent of university faculty staff have tenure‐track positions; in Germany, only 25 per cent of faculty staff have such contracts (Bomert & Leinfellner, , p. 111).…”

“…The second choice comes at the expense of cutting familial and intimate relations. Under this hidden gendered doxa of carelessness (Lynch et al, ), those who get permanent academic positions are disproportionately care‐free individuals: Bomert and Leinfellner (, p. 120) report that 75 per cent of the female research fellows and 62 per cent of the female professors in Germany were childless in 2006. Female research fellows, as well as female professors, are more likely to remain without children than their male colleagues throughout their careers, as 62 per cent of the female compared with 33 per cent of the male Professoriate had no children at that time.…”

“…We highlight existential choices around care and commitment that arise far more rarely for men. While both men and women are pressed to seek serial employment through geographic mobility, severing intimate, familial, social and professional relations (Bomert & Leinfellner, ), it is mostly women who do so in the context of the biological pressures of childbirth and imperatives to be the primary carer in families. This gives early career female academics two similarly limiting choices placing them on polar‐opposite employment tracks yet in similarly precarious existential positions.…”

“…The changes in the academic profession are most visible among early career academics and are evident in both anglophone and European countries (Bomert & Leinfellner, 2017;Bozzon, Murgia, Poggio, & Rapetti, 2017;Honan & Teferra, 2011). While celibate travelling scholars represented the medieval scholastic traditions, neoliberal demands for internationalization and self-marketization require a new kind of 'monk' , a truly elastic self 'with no boundaries in time, space, energy or emotion' (Devine et al, 2011, p. 632).…”

“…Given the moral imperative on women to care (Bubeck, 1995;Glenn, 2010;O'Brien, 2007), female academics are disproportionately affected by the masculinist care-free norms of geographic mobility and the 24/7 availability of the 'ideal academic' (Bomert & Leinfellner, 2017;Devine, Grummell, & Lynch, 2011;Herschberg et al, 2018;Lynch, 2010). Although employed women remain the primary carers in families (Lynch & Lyons, 2008), those in academia are assessed vis-à-vis the modalities of academic masculinity, the pinnacle of which is career masculinity involving a 'weak relational commitment ' (O'Connor, O'Hagan, & Brannen, 2015).…”