Reflections of Neoliberal Values on Women in Turkish Academia: An Analysis of Motherhood Practices

Neoliberalism has had important reflections on markets and societies with its highlight on individualism, productivity and competitiveness in a tightly integrated relations of production and consumption. Rivalry among markets, industries and individual firms has provided a disciplinary mechanism to increase the pressure on the implementation of time- and cost-efficient mass production, as well generation of high-quality output release as a form of market domination. Quality management procedures have diffused into markets as well as social relations through various economic policies and institutional regulations. Neoliberal values have penetrated academic institutions and universities. The new culture of individualism, productivity and competitiveness has furthered the pressure on quantity and quality of output, to highlight meritocracy in hire and fire processes. Higher education institutions operating at national levels and universities as particular institutional bodies have regulated and implemented sets of rules for academic promotions, denunciations and contract adjustments. Yet, these neoliberal tools have been designed in a gender-neutral way, which has failed to create a favourable environment for gender equality. To the contrary, imposition of the performance-based career building strategies has intensified the pressure on women scholars and generated bigger problems in securing work-life balance. Concurrently, neoliberal policies have significantly changed the access to public goods and services. Commodification of social services has turned childcare into a good exchanged in the market, where access to these has depended on their availability as well as the income range of buyers. Traditional social networks have also loosened to leave less room for unpaid access to childcare opportunities. These changes have further increased the pressure on women who have active role in the job market. Neoliberal policies have marginalised caregiving through cuts in welfare programmes, childcare services and maternity support. Alongside the changes in academia towards further competitiveness and in childcare services towards further commodification, motherhood itself has also transformed into a more competitive space with comparatively new additions such as healthy nutrition, academic success, development in extracurricular activities. Its individualisation and simultaneous glorification by a patriarchal discourse have led to reconfiguration of motherhood as a field of competition. This research aims to shed light on the role of neoliberalism in embedding competitiveness in academic career paths and motherhood practices. It proposes to explore the neoliberal roots of competitiveness to understand the extent to which mothers in academia engage in self-reflexivity regarding competition in career building and caregiving, by presenting three interrelated spaces of analysis: (i) academic market, (ii) childcare services, and (iii) motherhood. The research relies on semi-structured in-depth interviews with married and single mothers in the Turkish academia across various disciplines. Understanding how mothers in academia navigate their engagement in career building and caregiving activities in a highly competitive environment, it claims that academia exemplifies the cleavage between career building and caregiving as a microcosm of neoliberalism and its increasing emphasis on competitiveness.