Women Managers’ Experiences of Work: Precarity and Overworking Under Neoliberalism

To answer the question ‘does work have a future?’ we must first understand the economic, political and social contexts of its recent past. We argue since the 1990s there has been a perceptible rise in employment precarity across professions, industries and economies, including for managerial grades. We contend this results from a neoliberal economic agenda promoting deepening career uncertainty amid a context of radical corporate restructuring and transformative digital innovation. Among the effects of such occupational, organizational and technological change have been managers experiencing longer working hours, greater work intensification, and worsening work-life balance –effects which we argue have been particularly acute for women managers, and notably under the coronavirus pandemic. Presenting information from three qualitative, interview-based, studies (conducted in 2002-2006, 2015-2019, and 2020-2021) we discuss the nature of women managers’ work experiences since the millennium to frame discussion of their likely work prospects going forward. We claim, under neoliberalism, the enduring interaction of career precarity, organizational restructuring and technological surveillance will continue to effect, in adverse ways, the equilibrium between women managers’ personal lives and professional work – notably given many confront increasing demands of technological connectivity and corporate availability whilst simultaneously managing significant responsibilities for parenting and care.