The 8 hour day in the iPhone age

This is my text for tonight’s ALP fringe event hosted by the Australian Services Union. The opening story is a small edited section from “On Call”, Chapter 9 of Work’s Intimacy. The first time we interviewed Jodi* she was enjoying working from home once every few weeks. These were days when Jodi was encouraged to [...]

Between stops

I have been been back in Sydney for a couple of weeks following the ICA conference and some side trips afterwards. A few extra days in Townsville this week because of the ash cloud was a nice enforced break in the weather! Between marking and closing off the semester’s grades I’ve been working full time [...]

Promotions training

Yesterday I went to an induction session for staff serving on promotion committees this year. The speaker from the HR Equal Opportunity Unit showed another interesting set of figures. Based on staff numbers in 2010: Women comprise 46% of all academic staff at the university. Women make up 52% of staff at Levels A, B [...]

Workers as machines

As a follow up to Clif’s important comments, take a look at this amazing video produced by Jack Qiu. Deconstructing Foxconn from Jack Qiu on Vimeo. Jack presented some of this material in a heartwrenching paper during the Production Cultures spotlight session at Crossroads back in June. The images and stories from factories, dorms and [...]

On the value of work

One of the reasons I mentioned home economics classes in the previous post was because I’m starting to think that Matthew Crawford’s book, Shop Class as Soulcraft, has some hidden lessons for feminism. Make no mistake – it is a blokey book. Plenty of shop scenes and not much discussion of women’s participation in trades. [...]

Technologies of gender and labour

One of my big projects for the year comes to fruition next week. The Technologies of Gender and Labour roundtable I’ve been organising with Ann Deslandes is funded by the Academy of the Humanities International Science Linkages scheme. It’s an amazing opportunity to bring together some big names from here and overseas to talk about [...]

Tips from an ‘ECR’ survivor

I promised to report back on the career pathways discussion but I got distracted. One reason is that straight after the talk that Friday I went to my office and received a special, hand delivered notification from the Provost saying I had been promoted! So, even though I think I was supposed to keep it [...]

Learning to labour

To anyone who might be interested, there is a brief summary of last year’s State of the Industry conference in this month’s NTEU Advocate. I have no idea how many readers of this blog are union members, and it’s debatable whether the conference would have generated more applications to join, so I thought it might [...]

Manchester

Did anyone see that film with Sandra Bullock, The Proposal? I’m in Manchester now and being here is like the place she went to meet her PA’s folks. It is light all the time. It was light when I went to bed, it’s bright blue sky at 4.30am. The joys of cross-hemisphere travel! Anyway, this [...]

Dismantling the home office

This weekend I took apart our home office. It’s the first step in reclaiming my life after finishing the book manuscript. In a tiny 2 bedroom apartment, there’s not much room in the first place. Why would I work in one of them? When clearly my study shows I can work in all of them? [...]

keep looking »