On Being Precarious

Flynn, Deirdre

doi:10.3366/iur.2020.0433

Cited by 15 publications

(6 citation statements)

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“…Ferrara (2021) challenges the Irish policy for not prioritising ‘maternity support, childcare, accommodation, teaching load reduction options, and administrative relief for mothers.’ Since the 1990s, scholarship has shown maternity leave structure is troublesome for permanent staff (Keher, 1995), and it is even worse for other groups of workers in HE (Flynn, 2020; PGWA, 2021). The right of temporary research staff to family leave is ‘ambiguous’, depending on their line managers and the duration of their contracts (Maxwell et al, 2019).…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Still, Ireland is an active participant in shaping policy templates (Linková et al, 2020; Mercille and Murphy, 2015). Neoliberal trends resulted in the deterioration of working conditions with increased precarity (Flynn, 2020; Ivancheva et al, 2019; O’Keefe and Courtois, 2019; O’Sullivan et al, 2020) and the concentration of power on highly paid management positions. Because the ‘rhetoric of gender equality permeates new managerial reforms’ (Devine et al, 2011: 631), it is urgent to investigate how.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Shattered glass piling at the bottom: The ‘problem’ with gender equality policy for higher education

Ruggi

Duvvury

2022

Critical Social Policy

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Since 2014, gender equality has gained momentum in Irish higher education. Feminist organising and media attention resulted in an ‘almost-perfect storm of pressure’ to which the state responded by developing an ‘ambitious and radical’ policy. Employing Bacchi's methodology (WPR), this article demonstrates the problem of gender inequality has been gradually narrowed to address the lack of ‘women’ in senior positions. Competing problematisations were marginalised. The unequal distribution of care work in and out of higher education was ignored, silencing the gendered experiences of academics and non-academics, particularly precarious and outsourced staff. The policy machinery is found to reduce gender transformation to state-led stages and sideline feminist demands, highlighting the need to investigate the role of gender expertise and national statistics. The focus on the glass ceiling (a trend across Europe) is a form of ‘gender branding’ drawing on and reproducing neo-colonial progress-scales while stalling intersectional agendas.

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Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Shattered glass piling at the bottom: The ‘problem’ with gender equality policy for higher education

Ruggi

Duvvury

2022

Critical Social Policy

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“…Universities are rife with injustices, from the examples of exploitative supervision mentioned above to post-PhD precarity (Flynn 2020), racism (Law, Phillips, and Turney 2004), sexism (Skewes, Skewes, and Ryan 2019), and ableism (Powell 2021), to name a few. As SoTL practitioners, we believe that it is incumbent on us to fully investigate the structures enabling these inequalities before we concentrate on pedagogies for social justice.…”

Section: Throwing the Salmon Back And Sharing The Knowledge: The Pote...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Whose Knowledge is it Anyway? Epistemic Injustice and the Supervisor/Supervisee Relationship

Dineen,

Thelen,

Santucci

2024

TLI

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Higher education often acts as a bridge to society, preparing people for future social, political, and economic roles. For many academics, social justice and social inclusion are areas of research interest and teaching expertise. As such, institutions of higher education are well placed to foster reflection on social justice, through research and teaching, and thereby impact the wider society as students take up their roles within it. Yet, higher education itself should be subject to critique from a social justice point of view. Our aim in this article is to provide one such critique. We will focus on PhD research supervision, and in particular the supervisor/supervisee relationship. We will argue that the hierarchical nature of supervision can give rise to injustice. We will use the concepts of epistemic injustice and epistemic power as explanatory tools to clarify what is at issue within dysfunctional supervisor/supervisee relationships. Throughout, we will make use of the mythological story, "The Salmon of Knowledge," to unpack the hierarchies involved in knowledge acquisition/creation. Finally, we will conclude by noting the space within the scholarship of teaching and learning wherein critique of the structures within higher education from a social justice point of view occur, and where there exist potential gaps in this scholarship.

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“…The model of casualised employment at the university has had far-reaching impacts for the livelihood and experiences of affected academics. Unable to plan for the future, casual academics often rely on supplemental income from elsewhere, including social welfare or, if they are fortunate enough, support from their families (Delaney 2020;Flynn 2020). Since the performance of casual staff is tied to potential (though unguaranteed) career progression, casual academics are often heavily reliant on performance indicators such as student and staff feedback.…”

Section: Introduction: the Casual Academicmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Their findings echo much of the available data on casualised academics elsewherethat the Arts and Humanities and the Social Sciences departments often bear the brunt of austerity cuts, and that these employment practices disproportionately affect women and minorities in those sectors in particular. A stark number of these employees (around 46%) receive salaries considered below the poverty line, particularly if we take into consideration hours worked as opposed to hours paid (Flynn 2020). Many of these employees start work without any clear indication of their pay and conditions, and yet, perhaps most worryingly, many nevertheless feel 'grateful', given the vague assurances of future career development that is often suggested to them (Delaney 2020).…”

Section: Introduction: the Casual Academicmentioning

confidence: 99%

Early Career Anxieties in the University: The Crisis of Institutional Bad Faith

Brady

2021

Debating Higher Education: Philosophical Perspectives

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The issue of casualisation in universities has received much attention in recent years, with strike action across the UK highlighting the extent of the issue in the sector. In this chapter, I look at the situation in Irish universities, paying particular attention to the anxieties that confront early career staff. Whilst wider neoliberal trends in employment practices has no doubt played a key role in the changing nature of the Irish university, this chapter intends to look at the issue from a slightly different angle. Ultimately, I argue that the crisis of casualisation is a crisis of bad faith, a term most closely associated with the French philosopher, Jean-Paul Sartre. Whilst it is useful to explore Sartre's discussion of the individual's role in relation to bad faith, this nevertheless fails to account for the institutional context in which casual academics now work. In response to this, I aim to show how bad faith is encouraged by the institution, who in turn profit from their employees becoming like 'things-in-themselves', and with the unguaranteed promise of a more authentic life in the future, those employees then serveand become subservient to -the institution itself.

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On Being Precarious

Cited by 15 publications

References 0 publications

Shattered glass piling at the bottom: The ‘problem’ with gender equality policy for higher education

Shattered glass piling at the bottom: The ‘problem’ with gender equality policy for higher education

Whose Knowledge is it Anyway? Epistemic Injustice and the Supervisor/Supervisee Relationship

Early Career Anxieties in the University: The Crisis of Institutional Bad Faith

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