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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H alf a decade into a new global economic crisis, most policymakers, pundits, and scholars discuss the situation in nongendered ways, carting out long-standing criticisms of bloated states or of neoliberalism, despite powerful feminist critiques. At the same time, feminist scholars, particularly those within feminist political science (FPS) studying advanced democracies, have been struggling with a "central paradox. .. . The widespread formal adoption and development of. .. gender equality. .. initiatives. .. [but] their partial and variable institutionalization in terms of impact on institutional practices, norms, and outcomes" Janet Elise Johnson is grateful for travel funds from PSC-CUNY and The Nation (see Johnson 2011) and for Hrö nn Sveinsdó ttir and others who introduced me to Iceland. An earlier version of this article was presented at the European Consortium for Political Research in August of 2011 in a panel on "male dominance" chaired by Drude Dahlerup. A special thanks to our reviewers who went beyond the call of duty.

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It is suggested that the realization of work–life balance policies at the University of Iceland is compromised by an emphasis on neoliberal notions of growth and performance measurements in the form of new public management strategies. This is sustained by overt and covert incentive mechanisms, which in turn create a range of different gendered implications for academic staff. The results from semi-structured interviews suggest that while this tension field affects all academic staff, it is generally less favourable to women than to men. If women were granted time for the sake of family obligations, they risked a setback in their academic career due to decreased research activity. Women tended to view academic flexibility as an opportunity to engage in domestic responsibilities more so than men; and male interviewees tended to view the prioritization of family as a choice, while women tended to view it as a condition.

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