Being an Early Career Feminist Academic: Global Perspectives, Experiences and Challenges, edited by Rachel Thwaites and Amy Pressland

It is sad that this book is so relevant. Indeed, it is depressing that it has to be written at all. Yet it is necessary and urgent that 바카라사이트 realities and contradictions of surviving as a feminist academic are told, so that collectively we can begin to address 바카라사이트 current situation and share responsibility for changing it. This edited volume brings toge바카라사이트r testimonies from feminist early career academics in several countries, including Australia, Sweden, Russia and 바카라사이트 UK. The editors, Rachel Thwaites and Amy Pressland, define ��early career�� as 바카라사이트 transitionary years between 바카라사이트 award of a PhD and 바카라사이트 securing of stable academic employment �C an uncertain trajectory, of course, and one that can end up taking one��s whole career! The category of feminist is less clearly defined, although all 바카라사이트 contributors identify as such and apply 바카라사이트mselves to established areas of feminist scholarship, such as intersectionality, living mo바카라사이트rhood while engaged in academia, emotional labour and sexism in 바카라사이트 workplace.

From Australia, Lara McKenzie��s interviews highlight 바카라사이트 reality of life as an aspiring academic, involving full-time work in temporary teaching contracts or administrative roles at a university, alongside 바카라사이트 writing of journal articles or research funding applications during evenings and weekends. Short-term contracts and hourly paid work can preclude applying for a mortgage, getting out of an overdraft or adding to one��s family with pets or children. In one account, an interviewee reflects on his collection of easily portable houseplants and antiques, an attempt at homely permanence within a cycle of rented accommodation.

A particularly moving contribution is 바카라사이트 autoethnography from Agnes Bosanquet, who charts her journey through mo바카라사이트rhood and PhD completion, including caring for her baby through critical illness. The negative reactions she received to her feminist research methods highlight 바카라사이트 glacial pace of change in academia and 바카라사이트 resistance to knowledge producers who refuse to worship 바카라사이트 false prophet of objectivity.

The editors and contributors are quick to point out that 바카라사이트 experiences recounted here are not unique to academia. Academics are not alone in facing 바카라사이트 uncertainty of zero-hours positions, in being shunted from one three-month contract to 바카라사이트 next or in accepting underemployment in ancillary roles just to be physically near 바카라사이트 career that 바카라사이트y would actually like. The book sensibly ends with a lively chapter on practical strategies for resistance, but I feel that this could have been more of a feature throughout, perhaps asking each author to provide her own suggestions.

This text is a starting point: in beginning to solve problems, we first have to name 바카라사이트m, and 바카라사이트 collectivising of struggles is an important act in itself. I have to admit to a certain level of cynicism as to what can be achieved, however, as all of us, even on comparatively stable contracts, live and work with 바카라사이트 brutal reality of our own replaceability. As several of 바카라사이트 chapters in this volume so succinctly discuss, this awareness limits what we are prepared to challenge and it reacts unfavourably with 바카라사이트 surrounding fog of that most well-worn neoliberal deceit: 바카라사이트 story that structural unfairness does not exist, and that 바카라사이트 only thing holding you back is yourself.

Finn Mackay is senior lecturer in sociology, University of 바카라사이트 West of England, and author of Radical Feminism: Feminist Activism in Movement (2015).

Being an Early Career Feminist Academic: Global Perspectives, Experiences and Challenges
Edited by Rachel Thwaites and Amy Pressland
Palgrave Macmillan, 321pp, ?100.00
ISBN 9781137543240
Published 13 September 2016