Uncreatively writing women’s lives in academia

Women’s ‘experience’ in academia? That the turn to corporate managerialist practices and an emphasis on individualised academic achievement in the university sector has unevenly impacted on differentially positioned bodies and psyches is well-documented (e.g. Acker & Webber, 2017; Ahmed, 2012; David, 2014; Hart, 2016; Jackson, 2017; Osei-Kofi, 2014; Swan, 2010). An economic rationality that claims to be ‘neutral’ on gender, race and sexuality belies masculinist, white, heteronormative logics that privilege autonomy and competition and that individualise responsibility for success or failure (Ahmed, 2012; Blackmore, 2014; Davies & Bansel, 2010). Metrics proliferate (Strathern, 1997). The entrepreneurial academic subject is encouraged to take up this rationality in practices of concomitant self-promotion and self-surveillance (Hey & Bradford, 2004).