Academic women in neoliberal times:
Briony Lipton
- Australia: Palgrave macmillan, 2020.
- xi, 281 p. : 26 cm.
This book investigates the gendered dimensions of academic life in the contemporary Australian university. It examines key discourses – most notably academic performative and identity – through a feminist lens, and scrutinizes how discourses of neoliberalism and feminism are entangled in the structure, systems, operations and cultures of the university. Drawing on in-depth qualitative interviews with academic women in Australia, the author uses a mix of experimental methods to emphasize the performative and discursive decisions women make with regard to their academic careers. In doing so, this book reveals how women themselves generate neoliberal and feminist shifts, how they manage the contradictions they produce, and how they carve spaces of influence and authority. Moving towards a re-evaluation of existing discourses, this book offers new insights into gender inequality in the Australian university in neoliberal times.