Unsettled lives? Academic precarity, gender & personal life By Lara McKenzie University of Western Australia
It is common to hear about academics’ personal lives in terms of a "lack". We know, for instance, that academics have fewer children, marry less, and work longer hours than those in other ‘professions’ (Mason et al. 2013; NTEU 2015). The growing population of precariously employed academics is understood as especially afflicted, with couples and families needing to move or separate for work, and living with low, irregular pay and limited or no leave. These issues disproportionately impact women, and particularly young women, as this group is overrepresented in precarious academia (May et al. 2013). In 2015, interested to explore the intersection of precarity, gender, and personal life, I began an interview-based study of ‘aspiring academics’ in Australia. These aspiring academics were generally working at universities, in casual or fixed-term (precarious) roles, and seeking more secure academic research and/or teaching positions. To date, I have carried out 17 interviews in Perth and Adelaide, mostly with those from the humanities and social sciences. Twelve were women and five were men, and they were mainly in their 20s and 30s (reflecting the aforementioned tendency for precarious academics to be young and female). Most had finished their PhDs a few years ago. Here, I discuss some of my interviewees’ accounts, using pseudonyms (for a more lengthy discussion, see McKenzie 2017). The women and men I spoke with used words like ‘unstable’ to describe their current employment, career prospects, financial situation, the location of their work, and their relationships with others. Katie, for example, drew direct links between her academic career prospects and personal life. She was in her late 20s and had finished her PhD a few years ago. Since then, she had undertaken casual teaching, research, and administrative work at her university. We spoke about the financial implications of her casual employment, and she said: The money is a big thing… I’d like to be able to afford to move out of shared housing. I’d like to be able to afford to have children before I’m 70, buy a house, all that very white-picket fence kind of stuff. I feel like I didn’t realise that I was basically signing up for [pauses]… You think this is what happens when you go into the creative arts. It’s like, “No, I did a sensible thing! I did lots of university! I was going to become a teacher!” The inability to buy a home, to settle in one place, have children, or to manage mortgage repayments were common themes in people’s accounts. A particular concern of women was the impact that their financial situation had on their ability to start a family. Many women noted that they and their partners ‘would love to have kids’, but were unable to afford it. One woman, Julie, who after years of precarious employment had recently been hired as a lecturer, complained that moving her husband and child with her had been received very negatively by family, friends, and her husband. The alternative, which she had raised with him, was to divorce and take the child with her. The search for stable academic employment was thus understood to restrict personal relations. This is not surprising: stories such as Katie’s and Julie’s are common and often talked about, and this is also the starting point of great deal of research on academic employment. However, alongside this was an understanding that ‘unsettled’ academic lives were supported by and fostered by personal relationships. This is an area that has yet to receive much attention. Those I interviewed, and particularly the women, often mentioned receiving financial support from family members or partners,
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Connect // Volume 10, no. 1
Semester 1, 2017