Margaret Thornton

The Mirage of Merit: Reconstituting the 'Ideal Academic'

Abstract This paper takes a hard look at merit and the ideal academic, twin concepts that have been accorded short shrift by the scholarly literature. For the most authoritative positions, the ideal displays all the hallmarks of Benchmark Man. Despite the ostensible ‘feminisation’ of the academy, the liberal myth that merit is stable, objective and calculable lingers on. As a counterpoint to the feminisation thesis, it is argued that a re-masculinisation of the academy is occurring as a result of the transformation of higher education wrought by the new knowledge economy. In response, the ideal academic has become a ‘technopreneur’—a scientific researcher with business acumen who produces academic capitalism. This new ideal academic evinces a distinctly masculinist hue in contrast to the less-than-ideal academic—the humanities or social science teacher with large classes, who is more likely to be both casualised and feminised.

The demise of diversity in legal education: Globalisation and the new knowledge economy

Just when it appeared that legal education was becoming more critical, more humane and more diverse, the ground beneath our feet began to move. The earth opened up and the positive developments of two decades or more began to slip and slide inexorably towards a gaping abyss. Our eþ orts to intervene were of little avail. Some initiatives disappeared into the blackness and were never seen again. Others teetered on the edge. We tried to look but were overcome by vertigo. We fell into a stupor. Some of our colleagues had a dream in which a Midas-like ® gure appeared, crying out: `̀ The market is the way, the truth and the light. All who follow it faithfully and spread its message throughout the world shall experience eternal prosperity. Forsake all thought of justice and the life of the mind if thou hopest to partake of its rewards’ ’ . And they did.

The Public/Private Dichotomy: Gendered and Discriminatory

This paper argues that the malleability of the public/private dichotomy within liberal discourse is deployed by the state in order to mediate polarized interests. Even though anti-discrimination legislation does challenge the assignation of women to the private and men to the public spheres, the centrality of the dichotomy ensures that any changes which occur in the relations between men and women do not threaten the immunity accorded domestic life, the primary site of inequality for women. Selected aspects of the substance and procedure of anti-discrimination legislation will be used to illustrate the thesis. The examples are drawn from Australian antidiscrimination legislation, but the thesis applies equally to similar legislative models found in the United Kingdom, Canada and the United States of America. While I have focused on the particular significance of the public/ private dichotomy for gender, many facets of the dichotomy apply also to race, sexual preference, disability and other proscribed grounds. I also do not discount the ways in which gender may be shaped by its intersection with multifarious situational factors, including those factors which constitute proscribed grounds.

Feminism and the Changing State: The Case of Sex Discrimination

This paper examines the ambiguous relationship between feminism and the state through the lens of sex discrimination legislation. Particular attention will be paid to the changing nature of the state as manifested by its political trajectory from social liberalism to neoliberalism over the last few decades. As a creature of social liberalism, the passage of sex discrimination legislation was animated by notions of collective good and redistributive justice, but now that neoliberalism is in the ascendancy, we see a resiling from these values in favour of private good and promotion of the self through the market. This cluster of values associated with neoliberalism not only serves to reify the socially dominant strands of masculinity, it also goes hand-in-glove with neoconservatism, which is intent on restricting the inchoate freedoms of women. The erosion of social liberal measures has caused many feminists to feel more kindly disposed towards the liberal state. Some attempt to unravel the contradictions relating to feminism and the state with particular regard to the key discourses of equality of opportunity.

FEMINISM AND THE CHANGING STATE

This paper examines the ambiguous relationship between feminism and the state through the lens of sex discrimination legislation. Particular attention will be paid to the changing nature of the state as manifested by its political trajectory from social liberalism to neoliberalism over the last few decades. As a creature of social liberalism, the passage of sex discrimination legislation was animated by notions of collective good and redistributive justice, but now that neoliberalism is in the ascendancy, we see a resiling from these values in favour of private good and promotion of the self through the market. This cluster of values associated with neoliberalism not only serves to reify the socially dominant strands of masculinity, it also goes hand-in-glove with neoconservatism, which is intent on restricting the inchoate freedoms of women. The erosion of social liberal measures has caused many feminists to feel more kindly disposed towards the liberal state. Some attempt to unravel the contradictions relating to feminism and the state with particular regard to the key discourses of equality of opportunity.

Neoliberal Melancholia: The Case of Feminist Legal Scholarship

This paper arises out of a concern for the future of feminist legal scholarship in the academy. First, it considers the significance of the implosion of the category ‘woman’, suggesting that it should be understood in its particular epistemic context. Secondly, it considers the impact of the contemporary market paradigm on feminist legal scholarship and on feminist academics generally. As the prognosis is not optimistic, the paper poses the question as to whether the more appropriate site for feminist legal academics might be outside the academy.

Work/life or work/work? Corporate legal practice in the twenty-first century

Abstract This article problematises the rhetorical phrase of the moment—work/life balance (WLB)—with particular regard to large corporate law firms, many of which have recently become global conglomerates as a result of amalgamation. The principals and partners of these firms, like their corporate clients, are more concerned with cutting costs and maximising profits than whether the lawyers they employ are able to attain a ‘good life’. While flexible work has been sought by women lawyers for some time as the essential prerequisite to effecting gender equality, the reality has proved to be somewhat disappointing. Indeed, both men and women are stigmatised for seeking to work flexibly which poses a dilemma for the prospect of gender equality. Drawing on responses to a web-based survey and follow-up interviews with male and female lawyers in Australia in 2012–13, it is argued that, far from flexible work constituting a solution, it may not only entrench the masculinist identity of the ideal lawyer but it may also contribute to the dissolution of the boundary between law and life.

FEMINIST RESEARCH IN A CLIMATE OF INSECURITY

I have been asked to write about a successful application for an ARC Professorial Fellowship and Discovery Grant (2006 10) in the hope that it might be helpful to other feminist scholars. Although the times do not favour feminist scholarship, a topic on which I have elaborated elsewhere (Thornton 2004, 2006), the dismantling of the feminist agenda means that critique is more vital than ever. I will set my proposal in context by first making some observations about the current research climate, which is also a product of the shift from social liberalism to neoliberalism.

The Dissolution of the Social in the Legal Academy

This valedictory address presents an account of an experiment to set up a Department of Law and Legal Studies within a School of Social Sciences, at La Trobe University in Melbourne, with the aim of emphasising not just the role of law in its social context, but an interdisciplinary approach to the study of law. As with the attempts by the legal realists at Yale and Columbia in the 1920s and 1930s, the experiment was unsuccessful. In light of the evanescence of the vision, the question arose as to whether external political pressures, including the corporatisation of universities and the commodification of higher education, were responsible for inducing significant changes of direction or whether law is inherently resistant to the social.

Domesticating Disability Discrimination

This paper presents a brief overview of disability discrimination legislation in Australia over the last two decades. The documentation of the Australian experience may he of interest to jurisdictions contemplating such legislation. Although a raised social consciousness concerning disability has engendered remedial and prophylactic developments a simple progressivist thesis has to he rejected because antidiscrimination legislation is also sensitive to less positive social moods. Despite the appearance of sophisticated models of legislation during the last decade, die conservative political mood of the 1990s has seen a growing ambivalence about the extent of support for progressive social measures, mirroring trends in other pails of the world. The ambivalence subtly ensures that a line of demarcation between the norm and the ‘other’ remains.