AFTER THE IVORY TOWER - GENDER, COMMODIFICATION AND THE ACADEMIC

This piece uses a feminist approach to explore various aspects of 'com modification' in the lives and work of those teaching and researching in UK universities, and in particular its gender dimensions. After set ting a historical context for the radical transformation of UK univers ities during the 1980s, it considers how this transformation was exper ienced by academics in terms of alienation, anxiety and accountability . Key features of that experience are loss of autonomy and control to the external power of competition and managerialism, insecurity and ca sualization in employment, and exposure to increasing judgemental scru tiny. For women academics job insecurity and discrimination continue t o be disproportionately important, although some of the challenges to old established academic convention and practice have opened up real p ossibilities to progress more pro-women agendas. In the future they wi ll confront quite depressing developments in the reconstruction of aca demic identities and labour, but have the legacy of the gains/insights of feminist analysis and politics over the last twenty years with whi ch to do so.