The melancholic subject: A study of self-blame as a gendered and neoliberal psychic response to loss of the ‘perfect worker’

Baker, Darren T.; Brewis, Deborah N.

doi:10.1016/j.aos.2019.101093

Cited by 31 publications

(43 citation statements)

References 91 publications

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“…Clough considers capitalism as “engaged in the socialization of the affective” (2003, p. 360). Baker & Brewis identify “neoliberal discourses” as reinscribing “gender inequality at a psychic level” (2020, p. 1). As a gendered neoliberalism, postfeminism enforces “feeling rules” (Hochschild, 1979) comprised of aspirational affects, hope, resilience, confidence, positivity, happiness, and personal growth, and “systematically outlaws other emotional states, including anger and insecurity” (Gill, 2017).…”

Section: Postfeminist Fatherhoodmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…As a gendered neoliberalism, postfeminism enforces “feeling rules” (Hochschild, 1979) comprised of aspirational affects, hope, resilience, confidence, positivity, happiness, and personal growth, and “systematically outlaws other emotional states, including anger and insecurity” (Gill, 2017). Yet by centering entrepreneurialism and individualizing inequities in favor of choice and excellence, barriers in embodying perfection are “experienced as a deeply personal failure” (Baker & Brewis, 2020, p. 3). With postfeminism, one side of the coin is positivity, and the other is pathos, yet the latter has been under‐studied in postfeminist masculinity literature.…”

Section: Postfeminist Fatherhoodmentioning

confidence: 99%

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The emotional toll of postfeminist fatherhood

Gruson‐Wood

Rice

Haines

et al. 2021

Gender Work & Organization

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Postfeminism shapes the political economy of the workforce and household, constituting a re-entrenchment of traditional heterosexual gender regimes and the pressure to transgress them. Focusing on the understudied area of postfeminist masculinity, we analyze the emotional toll some fathers experience as a result of the fraught expectations to be the breadwinner, nurturing parent, and enlightened feminist spouse who completes equal domestic duties. Using empirical data of parents' participation in a family-based health intervention, we argue that the paradoxical expectation to enact traditional gender relations and to adopt gender egalitarianism is exhausting, upsetting, and confusing for fathers. By focusing on the affective dimensions of postfeminism, we demonstrate how working to achieve the impossible expectation of doing "it all," a bind that women have been caught in for centuries, takes an emotional toll on fathers and couples, leading to discontent at work and home, and in regard to their self-concept, parental role, and spousal relationship. We close by offering counter examples of fathers and couples who have disengaged from postfeminist parenting relations and have reached a state of contentment. Contrary to the alignment of postfeminism with positive affect, the experience of resisting postfeminist resulted in feelings of joy, pride, and satisfaction.

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Section: Postfeminist Fatherhoodmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Postfeminist Fatherhoodmentioning

confidence: 99%

The emotional toll of postfeminist fatherhood

Gruson‐Wood

Rice

Haines

et al. 2021

Gender Work & Organization

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…We felt this inequality acutely when we took on our role as parents. Reflecting on our lives pre‐children, it does seem that the more care roles you have in your life, the less well you fit with what Baker and Brewis (2020) have recently termed the neoliberal academic “ideal worker.” As Baker and Brewis note, this “perfected self” is constructed (from both within and without) through a combination of external formal performance indicators, journal rankings, citation scores, H‐indexes, and peer pressure combined with personal pride, professional envy (compare and despair), and ambition to set high expectations for how productive you should be: How many 3 and 4 ranked articles you should be writing; how much research income you should be generating; and how well you are able to create and service a suitably broad and international set of professional networks, collaborations, and online profiles. As Baker and Brewis note, this creates a professional identity undergirded by melancholy in which we all feel like underachieving imposters whose worth is measured by quantities of outputs rather than the quality of teaching and scholarship.…”

Section: Navigating the “New Normal” Within The Neoliberal Academymentioning

confidence: 99%

Towards a feminist parental ethics

Kelly

Senior

2020

Gender Work & Organization

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Drawing on our experiences of parenting during the global COVID-19 pandemic of 2020, we explore the potential for a feminist parental ethics through which parenting can be rethought, reclaimed, and so brought forth as a vital and valuable assemblage of collective articulation work, shared "motherings," and embodied interconnectivities of caring for and caring with the other. A feminist parental ethics is particularly important in the neoliberal academic context, where the responsibilities of caregiving that lockdown has thrust upon many workers in higher education have been largely downplayed, dismissed, or even ignored across the sector in the interest of maintaining "business as usual." In response, we ask: "who is caring for the parents?" and we call for an extended idea of parenting beyond the familial as a means of differently organizing our societies, workplaces, and institutions around a shared locus of care.

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“…This has important implications for institutions, universities and individuals, in particular those interested in challenging power hierarchical structures in academia and advancing the representation of women and diverse individuals in apical roles in economics. In fact, an unquestioning focus on apparently gender-neutral criteria (such as merit and excellence) leads many women and minorities to interpret their activities and their selves as lacking in merit (Baker and Brewis, 2020) or worse, to accept and promote mainstream definitions of excellence (Carter et al 2010;Forget 2011;Zacchia 2017) with an overall reduction of pluralism in the profession. Psychological and sociological literature has underlined how the discourse of excellence is a tool used (consciously or unconsciously) to support hierarchies, practices and norms that in turn underpin a hegemonic system (Sliwa and Johansson 2014).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

What Does It Take to Be Top Women Economists? An Analysis Using Rankings in RePEc

Zacchia

2020

Review of Political Economy

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Women are substantially under-represented in the field of economics all around the world: their progress is slow and just few women reach top positions. From the 1980s, studies document the clear barriers and implicit biases in publishing, promotion, and tenure that women face to enter and to success in the field. The paper aims at contributing to this strand of literature proposing an analysis of gender differences in economics focusing on "excellence" in the profession and in the way the discipline is conceiving and reproducing it in rankings. Using RePEc as a dataset, I test how different definitions of excellence can systematically advantage or disadvantage women's visibility in rankings of top economists and how it impacts on their probability to receive rightful recognition in academia. I found that, even among top economists, being a woman significantly reduces the probability of reaching the top of the profession by almost 15 pp. The results also underline a problematic relationship between gender and excellence that sets the bar higher for women in reaching the top of the academic career. Women economists, despite their efforts to increase their visibility, tend to receive less recognition than men in terms of promotion to full-professorship based on the criterion of excellence in which they excel. In fact, women are penalised in their academic progresses, not only for their lower productivity in terms of number of published articles than their male colleagues but also for lower returns in promotions for their high performance in terms of citations received. Challenging the assumption about gender neutral excellence is a first important step to challenge power hierarchical patriarchal structures in the economics profession and to advance the representation of women and diverse individuals in apical roles in economics.

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The melancholic subject: A study of self-blame as a gendered and neoliberal psychic response to loss of the ‘perfect worker’

Cited by 31 publications

References 91 publications

The emotional toll of postfeminist fatherhood

The emotional toll of postfeminist fatherhood

Towards a feminist parental ethics

What Does It Take to Be Top Women Economists? An Analysis Using Rankings in RePEc

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