El tiempo en el conflicto trabajo-vida: El caso de las académicas en la universidad managerial

Abstract

Currently, academic work is characterized by a management system focused on the permanent measurement of performance, competitive funding and the search for efficiency and acceleration of scientific productivity. Although probity and meritocratic systems at the base of the new academic management have allowed to mitigate arbitrariness and reduce the historical gender gap in universities, successful women researchers have had to assume a high personal cost. The double working day, the choice between a scientific career or motherhood and the responsibility for reconciling work and family are part of the so-called work-life conflict in academic work. This article examines the interpretative repertoires built by women scientists around time and the work-life conflict. Using data produced in 20 active interviews with women from different Chilean universities, we identify three interpretive repertoires: Suffering from time; Managing time, and Re-inventing time. These results show how, even when work and life time seem to advance in incompatible ways, women academics actively seek their reconciliation, enrolling their alternative work subjectivities.