Spaces of female “agency” and emerging patterns of intersectional inequality: gender, class and partnership status in academic capitalism

Purpose This contribution invites readers to shift the attention from the effects that academic capitalism has on gender inequalities toward new, under-explored, gendered aspects. More specifically, it investigates the opportunities that market-based university transformations offer to women as well as the new forms of power hierarchies that they reproduce among women themselves. Design/methodology/approach For this purpose, twenty-three interviews with academics who work or have worked in a life-science department of a large Italian university have been analyzed by adopting an intersectional approach aimed at seizing the junctures between gender, class and partnership status. Findings This article sheds light on three specific aspects. First, it suggests that new opportunities for women – related to the emerging managerial academic culture – are arising, and these are likely to offset existing gender asymmetries. These opportunities – which do not come without costs – are related to the growing importance of individual, competitive-based research funding. I have named this phenomenon “the golden goose effect.” Second, it highlights the effects of the increasing precarization of academic work in terms of inequalities among women, based on social class and partnership status. In this vein, it challenges the idea that women drop-out more than men, as opting out depends on the intersection between (1) economic resources (from the family of origin and/or the chosen family), (2) non-academic labor market opportunities and (3) gender regimes. Thirdly, by focusing on the role of the chosen family in shaping career opportunities, new research venues are suggested, which should bring into the analysis single women and women in same-sex couples. Practical implications The benefits related to early-career individual grants could be reinforced, on the one hand, by incentivizing universities that recruit early-career grantees with further public resources and, on the other and, by promoting women-specific funding schemes (or by reserving part of the budget of existing early career grants to women). Such excellence-driven policies should be always balanced by DEI (Diversity, Equity and Inclusion) and work-life balance policies. At the same time, actions aimed at reducing work precarity in academia are needed, including increasing public resources to higher-education institutions. Originality/value Without denying the downsides, widely identified by a rich literature, of the advent of academic capitalism for women, this article draws attention to two under-explored aspects, namely the spaces of gender “equality” within the new academia and the new patterns of privilege. In this respect, it suggests that women's “amelioration” of opportunities comes along with persisting inequalities among women themselves.