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In the labour market women’s jobs have frequently been conceptually and literally tied to housework and hence thought of as unskilled and therefore undervalued. Although academic institutions have undergone changes, the fact that women still carry the main responsibility for domestic and caring tasks continues to follow them into the academic work environment. In this explorative study we focus on the gendered aspects of undervalued work in academia by examining how academic housework manifests itself in different academic contexts and how early career academics in six European countries contend with it. We will link the undervalued academic work to housework in a double sense. Firstly, we will discuss how domestic housework affects the working conditions of academic women and men differently in their early career. Secondly, we will approach academic work through the lenses of academic housework, hence making use of the notion of ‘housework’ in a transferred and more figurative meaning. The discussion is aimed at developing a new conceptual framework in the analysis of gendered academic careers. In this way the topic of academic housework, which seems to be accompanied by social taint, may become more easily discussable within the academic work environment.

In the era of global competition, academic institutions are increasingly being managed as efficient organizations where early career academics are the most vulnerable group in the academic hierarchy. We use gender budgeting to deconstruct the financial and managerial processes and procedures in a selected academic institution in Iceland. Drawing on multiple data collection methods, we argue that new managerialism enhances the precarious position of early career academics, especially women and those in the more feminized fields. Furthermore, we show that the system's bias in favour of so‐called hard science generates gendered consequences for early career academics. We demonstrate this structural gender bias in each of the first three stages of an academic career: PhD, postdoc and other temporary positions, and assistant professorship. By highlighting the gendered consequences of new managerialism, we want to direct attention to the need to include a gender perspective in the budgeting and all the decision‐making processes in academic institutions.

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