Kaye Broadbent

Research staff in Australian universities: is there a career path?

As universities in Australia have undergone transformation in the past two decades, the pressure on academics to gain external grant funding for research has increased. In the same time period, the number of research academic staff has increased substantially and they account for one-third of the academic workforce. Despite this expansion, there is limited research on the employment characteristics or career aspirations of the research academic workforce. The Work and Careers in Australian Universities survey of 19 Australian universities revealed that the workforce needs to be differentiated on the basis of employment contract as the overwhelming majority of research staff are on fixed term contracts. There appears to be limited means to transfer from this ‘periphery’ employment to the ‘core’ where a permanent appointment and career path are available.

‘I’d rather work in a supermarket’: privatization of home care work in Japan

The rise in nuclear family households and more married women engaging in paid work have forced governments to address the issue of aged care for the elderly to a greater degree. A good illustration is home care in Japan where the government introduced a Long Term Care Insurance scheme (LTCI) (2000) focused on offering affordable almost universal care by extending existing home care services. Japan’s home care services were privatized in 2006 and, while this is not unique to Japan, the combination of cost-cutting measures and the client-driven model encompassed in the LTCI has had a significant impact on employment conditions and the organization of work in home care services. This research assesses the impact on employment conditions and the organization of work in Japan’s former government-run home care sector compared with the pre-LTCI period and argues that privatization has resulted in work intensification and deteriorating employment conditions.

Flexibility at Work? The Feminisation of Part-Time Work in Japan

Atkinson’s flexible firm model analyses the segmentation of the workforce utilising the concepts of core and periphery. This model offers a starting point for examining the segmentation of Japan’s labour market but provides little direction in the exploration of why women are predominant in the part-time workforce. The disparity in employment conditions between female and male workers in the periphery is fostering the development of a gender hierarchy in Japan’s non-full-time workforce resembling that existing in ‘lifetime’ employment practices. This raises questions which challenge the applicability of a model for analysing part-time work in Japan, which ignores a consideration of the gender contract.

Academic pay loadings and gender in Australian universities

Academic pay loadings are one potential mechanism of gender pay disparity in universities. Drawing on a large-scale survey of Australian academics with over 8000 respondents, we analyse how ‘discretionary’ and higher duties loadings (or bonuses) are distributed between men and women, and investigate the reasons for such distributions. Investigating both incidence and quantum, we find that discretionary loadings are particularly susceptible to gender influences. We explain this finding in terms of the concepts of regulation distance and the meritocracy paradox. The findings have implications for the design of loadings schemes in universities, and, by implication, in other kinds of organisations that provide loadings.

Gender and part-time work in Japan

Part‐time work in Japan, as in other countries, is increasing as a form of paid work. There are, however, significant differences developing out of Japan’s gender contract. Employers have created a gendered employment strategy which has been supported by governments, through social welfare policies and legislation, and the mainstream enterprise union movement which has supported categorisations of part‐time workers as “auxilliary” despite their importance at the workplace. An analysis of one national supermarket chain indicates that part‐time work as it is constructed in Japan does not challenge the gendered division of labour but seeks to lock women into the secondary labour market.

Power in the Union? Part-time workers and enterprise unionism in Japan

Increases in the number of jobs for part‐time workers has had little impact on the rate of unionisation for part‐time workers, the majority of whom are women. The argument run by union officials in Japan is that women, and thus part‐time workers, are not interested in industrial issues. This study explores an alternative explanation which is that union officials and “core” male workers are excluding women and part‐time workers in order to protect their own privileged position. Whilst it is acknowledged that the organisational structure of enterprise unions makes it difficult to incorporate the needs of part‐time workers, it is the attitudes of “core” male workers and union officials to women as paid workers that is the major hurdle to the non‐unionisation of part‐time workers. For women and part‐time workers there is no power in the union.

‘It’s difficult to forecast your longer term career milestone’: career development and insecure employment for research academics in Australian universities

ABSTRACT Universities globally have undergone significant changes in the past three decades and Australia is no exception. The importance to universities of research has resulted in a surge in the employment of research focused academics in Australian universities. Findings from the 2011 Work and Careers in Australian Universities (WCAU) survey revealed 84% of research academics were employed on fixed-term contracts. To explore the impact of insecure employment for research academics we used the labour market segmentation literature to determine whether these academics constitute a ‘secondary’ labour force. Interviews with 18 research academics revealed insecure employment had negatively affected their career development. Responses indicated that it affected particularly their ability to publish productively, develop an independent research profile and form networks and collaborative connections. Insecure employment has a largely negative impact on research academics’ careers and as a result they have become a ‘secondary’ labour force in universities.

Self-reported harassment and bullying in Australian universities: explaining differences between regional, metropolitan and elite institutions

We analyse data from the largest survey of university staff in Australia to determine whether bullying and harassment are more common in regional than metropolitan and Go8 universities, and to what extent any differences could be attributed to other factors. While professional staff showed no difference in harassment rates between regional and metropolitan and Go8 universities, academic staff at regional universities reported significantly higher levels of harassment. This probably reflected the labour market and resource context of regional universities. Binary logistic regression indicated that a perceived lack of support for professional development partially explained the effect of regional status on differences in the rates of harassment/bullying across university types. Markers of organisational culture only partially account for differences in the rates of harassment/bullying between university types.

‘For women, by women’: women-only unions in Japan

Low rates of union membership and lack of representation on union committees for women in contemporary union structures in Japan disguise the contributions women have made to the union movement. In exploring the development of women-only unions in Japan and the role they fulfil as women-only organizations, I argue that enterprise unions are exclusive and their weakened position vis-à-vis employers and the state combined with the androcentrism of their policies and practices have resulted in their failure to provide adequate and effective representation for women. It is therefore not surprising that women have created separate structures, including women-only unions, to address issues that existing unions have failed to address and to provide alternative forms of representation for women workers who are not organized by existing unions.

Academics: How Career Structures and Segmentation Undermine Pay Regulation

Women academics experience low regulation distance due to collective agreements, state regulation, unionization, and formalized policies. Using a large Australian survey, we find that the occupation is, overall, of mixed gender, but labor segmentation occurs within academia, as there are several labor markets related to academic disciplines. Internal pay gaps are minimized by rules on formal pay, but universities seek “flexibility” through discretionary bonuses. The immediate driver of the gender gap is uneven proportions of women at different levels of academia. Non-pay elements entrench gender-related barriers to advancement, including harassment, issues of insecurity associated with casual and fixed-term work, marginalization of new entrants into teaching-heavy roles, and the impact that norms about care responsibilities have on the domestic–work interface and on women’s access to social capital.