Where's the level playing field? A feminist perspective on educational restructuring
Jill Blackmore Deakin Centre for Education and Change
Paper presented to the Annual Conference of the Australian Association of Research in Education Hobart, Nov 26-30 1995
Where's the level playing field? A feminist perspective on educational restructuring
Jill Blackmore
Restructuring is a term which has taken ln on considerable discursive power since the mid 1980s. Key national reports have spoken of the need to restructure the workplace to make it more efficient, effective and competitive. Restructuring is premised upon the view that workers and organisations should be more flexible, consumer and globally oriented. Various government policies since 1987 Australia Reconstructed and more recently the Karpin Report(1995) on management education have focused upon workers ( including managers) as being multiskilled, flexible and adaptable in order to achieve new levels of national productivity. But as Bagguley et al (1990) and Belinda Probert (1993) have suggested, while restructuring has always been both the context for and objective of policy, it has been relatively undertheorised or undefined. Furthermore, I will suggest, current policies draw unproblematically upon particularly optimistic accounts of the nature and needs of post industrial societies.
In this paper I want to explore some of the key concepts which are central to the discourse of restructuring - flexibility, skill and performativity- and to consider how policy texts seeking to restructure educational work have, through drawing upon particular discourses and not others, mediate new social and economic relationships in the workplace which have signficant implications for women educators in all education sectors. The discourses which inform these texts, and in turn which are informed by the policy texts, circulate locally and globally. Policy documents are much negotiated texts, the product of discursive formation, which in turn feedback into practice. Polices both produce and reproduce discourses, in ways which privilege particular meanings and not others. The 'fast capitalist' policy texts such asSkilling Australia, and Schools of the Future justify restructuring as necessary for Australia to become competitive internationally and encourage economic growth. In turn, such texts call upon wider global discourses about the role of education which privileges optimistic accounts of the nature of the post modern
condition.
This paper is also a shift in the theoretical frames I am using. I have found feminist postructuralism useful as a tool of analysis in various studies of gender equity reform, particularly with regard to the 'reception' of policy. Using the notion of policy as text provides an understanding of both how policy is read and rewritten in schools by teachers and by students in unexpected and highly differentiated ways ( Kenway et al 1994). Texts here refer to policy documents as well as a range of gender reform discourses in education. Teachers and students, as policymakers, both produce and consume gender reform texts. Feminist poststructuralism also assists me to understand the types of contradictions women educators confront in their daily practice, contradictions which are not just part of a real world 'out there' but which are part of our inner selves. Feminist post structuralism allows one to understand how individuals make meaning of their material and cultural world.
At the same time, the ways in which there are patterned and systematised inequalities based on gender, class, race, ethnicity is undeniable. Postmodernism and post- structuralism confront such metanarratives. Post structuralism has the susceptibility to be read conservatively from a highly individualistic and relativist position. But it also can be read creatively if identified with a strong sense of gender and a politics of difference, in which we place women at the centre of the analysis. This tension between a more universalising feminist politics for change for all women and particularistic politics of practice in specific local sites where gender, race, class work differentially is ongoing and theoretically challenging.
I want to take the position here that we need to work strategically, in this instance theoretically as well as in political practice in looking for 'useful' theory epistemologically, politically and ethically. That is, there are instances when we need to universalise the experience of women-cross culturally, cross-race, cross-class, cross-temporally; and other instances where we need to concretise and emphasise specificity and difference amongst women. This does not necessarily reconstruct the local/global divide. Rather we need to consider the processes of the articulation between the macro and the micro; the particular and the universal. 'Useful theory', according to Jean Anyon (1994) (i) does not derive its value merely in reference to other theories but as a result of a dialogue between one's goal and current activities; (ii) 'would be neither total ( and therefore seamless and deterministic) nor completely ad hoc and aplicable only to one locale', but would recognise the complexity of social life and develop middle range theories which would 'connect local activity to widespread social constraints' (iii) 'makes theoretical recommendations which are capable of enactment' (iv) and would 'identify actions to be taken'or, as I would say, useful theory would simultaneously come out of and inform practice for change ( from Anyon 1994, p. 129).
Notions of post modernism and post structuralism are also useful because of their focus upon deconstruction, discourses and the constituted subject ( see Anyon, 1994). In particular I find the postmodern /post structural notion of discourse useful because it provides a way of understanding the articulation between the local and global, the personal and the private. Discourses are systematic sets of meanings which circulate, often around practices of particular institutions (teacher profession), but also globally and locally,
around particular cultural and social practices ( eg. nationalism). Discourses are both regulating and constraining in that they enable new meanings to be made in specific sites around a specific set of relationships e.g. teacher/ student but are also act as form of regulation in that there are boundaries placed, and particular meanings privileged within these discourses. Lee and Wickert (1995) talk about : how in twentieth century social history, some discourses have taken on a dominating role across a variety of institutions, determining the kinds of meanings and truths that can or cannot be developed. One of the most powerful of these has been psychology, which has so pervaded institutions such as education , law and medicine, that psychological conceptions of social relationships have often been passed in to 'common sense' universal understandings about the way things are, rather han seeing these as discursive construction with particular kinds of effects'.
Discourses have particular view of power and social relationships-- in the instance of the above, of power being invested in an individual's psychology, which is to some degree predetermined. Other dominant twentieth century educational discourses are vocationalism and liberal meritocracy ( Blackmore, 1986; 1991). These discourses sometimes overlap, contradict, and sometimes merge because of shared assumptions about the nature of change and the relationship between the individual, education and the state.
Whereas post structuralist accounts have tended to focus upon the local, any analyses of the local in the Foucauldian sense is built upon assumptions about systemic relationships or metapolitics. As Jean Anyon argues, about the focus upon the local: analyses of the 'micro' always contain some understanding of the larger, the societal, the enveloping 'macro'. In the case of racism for example, some knowledge of the ways racism is structured by the laws, conventions, and histories of our society, some knowledge of the ways in which the economy, the technologies, and sexism interact with racism-these are always present, even implicitly, in analyses of local power dynamics( Anyon, 1994, p.125).
What the notion of a politics of discourse ( see Yeatman 1990) does is provide a way of considering how the global and local interact, of how globalising tendencies such as educational restructuring have particular and significant social and material effects in local sites and on individuals, but in often significantly different and/or highly patterned ways; and in turn how particular local renditions of restructuring are globalised ( through the agencies of the OECD, World Bank, IMF). I use the notion of discourse in a strong materialist sense ( Hennessey 1994, Yeatman 1994). Such a perspective sees some discourses becoming more powerful in particular historical conditions, and having considerable material effects in highly patterned ways, globally and and locally. Particularly instrumental readings of the discourse of vocationalism and the connections between education and the economy, for example, are privileged in times of economic crisis.
But in using the concept of discourse I do not, as Jean Anyon argues, wish to 'overtly transfer the agency from persons to language' (Anyon , 1994, p. 128) and thereby undermine the politics of practice which requires an understanding of the material as well as the discursive. This requires more than abtract theorising but actions in concrete situations. I see feminist post structuralism as recognising the ways we make meaning of our world and how individuals are positioned differentially relative to others on the basis of the relational
politics of gender, race, ethnicity and sexuality. Power is not located merely within individuals in a psychological sense or institutions in a structural sense. Power works through a network of relationships - in which some are positioned more powerfully due to the historically and socially constituted nature of specific contexts in ways which are not necessarily predetermined, and which are constituted both unconsciously and consciously. But power also is derived from the control of resources and the capacity to allocate or re-distribute resources and is not derived merely out of a discourse about scarcity itself. That is power is more than language games, it is about the capacity to effect the material conditions within which we work, which in turn shapes our 'choices' or options. We can therefore be 'well informed' as to the range of possibilities and options, and be conscious as to the ways in which we are positioned discursively, but still be rendered powerless in decisionmaking situations unless we can through persuasion or through being in the position to allocate resources lead to a more equitable distribution of resources which increases options of ourselves and others.
In this paper I am seeking useful theories which explain the interdependence between local and global discursive regimes of restructuring and their political implications. It also explores some of the central tenets of restructuring eg. flexibility, of how they have been re-made in ways which do not fulfil the promises of dominant discourses.
Restructuring
Restructuring theory seeks to conceptualise the spatial / temporal aspects of radical and rapid economic and and social change. The logic of the discourse of restructuring is that we need new forms of work organisation, education and training for post industrial /post modern times. The assumption is that power is imparted through the development of new information technologies and economic growth. In late 1980s Australia, getting the economy right was seen to be the basis for cultural development. During the 1990s there has been a blurring of the economic and the aesthetic, in that culture is itself has become a site of production and consumption, both the object and the subject of the circulation of capital given the global capacities of the new information technologies. Images of national identity are now sources of productivity (Kenway et al 1995).
The context for change is, according to the logic of the discourse of restructuring, is the post modern condition. Indeed, the notion of context itself is problematic ( given that it is often perceived to be some sort of generalised unchanging backdrop or set of conditions which have some relationships with the phenomenon of restructuring) (Gilbert, 1993; Seddon, 1993). Post modernism as the context of restructuring is most broadly defined as a set of historical conditions which emanate from new cultural forms arising out of new information technologies and the globalisation of markets. Post modernism most often refers to the cultural and aesthetic dimensions of everyday life, but also relates to other shifting social relationships arising out of new spatial and material conditions in work such as shift from Fordist to post -Fordist work organisation. Increasingly, though, one cannot separate the cultural and aesthetic from production and how work is organised.
Andy Green categorises postmodernist theory into three strands: the culltural critqiue of modernist art and architecture; the French post structuralism and deconstructionism of Derrida and Foucault; and the
body of work about changing social and economic organisation, of which a dominant element is post Fordism. Other postmodernists such as Baudrilllard and Lyotard call upon all of these to produce what Green argues are gross generalisations across time and space ( Green 1994 p. ). This paper will draw largely upon the work of the last group, the social geographers.
There are two dominant and contrary readings of the postmodern moment. Lather typifies these contrary readings as the postmodernisms of reaction and resistance -the former characterised by the collapse of meaning, social alienation, simultaneously with increased normalisation and regulation and a multinational hyperspace ( Lather 1991, p. 33); the latter with the notion of a participatory dialogic and pluralistic structures of authority, to going beyond the dualisms and hierarchies, of multiple sites of meaning, and recognition of difference, and a sense of self without estrangement.
The optimist version see PM producing a greater democratisation of culture and rejection of the cultural hierarchies as 'Compartmentalised boundaries between the aesthetic and the practical art and life, the cultural and the real, high and low, work and play, duty and pleasure, all become blurred' (Bagguley et al, 1990,p. 6). New information technologies, in this reading, provide access to communicate freely across global sites and intra-organisationally e.g. subversive possibilities in organisations in the use of e-mail. Hence the capacity of individuals globally ( at least those with access to internet) to protest to Jacques Chirac about nuclear testing by 'bombing' his e-mail with protests.
The pessimistic version, such as that of Harvey (1987), sees the condition of postmodernity as a form of 'hysterical hyperconsumption' and postmodernism as subsumed under new modes of capitalism. Harvey explores the ways in which the regime of accumulation is associated with a particular mode of social and political regulation, a body of 'interiorised rules and social processes'. Hueristically, regulation is a device which 'focuses our attention upon the complex interrelations, habits, political practices and cultural forms that allow a highy dynamic and consequently unstable, capitalist system to acquire some semblance of order'. Harvey cites two problems for the capitalist system: the anarchy of price fixing markets and the need to control labour power. He sees the state as acting as the intermediary in compensating for market failures, to prevent excessive concentrations of market power, to provide collective goods and objects which cannot be produced through the market, and to detect aberrant market behaviours. The other need is to convert women and men's capacity to do active work through self discipline, habituation and knowledge power. The disciplining of labour power requires a variety of processes- repression, habituation, co-optation and co-operation. Education, training and the mobilisation of particular sentiments (work ethic, company loyalty) and psychological imperatives (work identity, individual initiative and social solidarity) all play a role (Harvey, 1987, pp. 122-4). As the management guru Peter Drucker (Waring 1990) well recognised, intellectual labour poses particular problems for managers. For productivity relies upon the creative impetus of intellectual labour, but management needs to control the direction and output. Policy texts have the capacity to do both. They have both discursive and material force, they frame the possibilities for action, as well as distribution and allocation of resources which either inhibit or privilege particular practices: that is, policy provides both the discursive and material conditions for action. The question is whether we are merely in a temporary state or a stage of transition to a new mode of regulation other than Fordism, or, as is more likely,
that both forms coexist? Do we need a new type of worker for a new type of workplace?
The post modernist approaches of the social and Marxist geographers Lash and Urry (1994) suggest that postmodernism presents both possibilities and constraints, as it simultaneously builds upon qualitative changes. They see consumer capitalism as the intensification and continuance of the remnants of modernism with the older imperatives of capitalist accumulation alongside the modernist agendas of liberation (gender, class, race, ethnicity, environmentalists). Lash and Urry see the post modern as paralleling economic, spatial and political changes, and 'the service class as both creating and consuming post modern culture'( Bagguley 1990 p.7), thus relating and inter-relating with particular modes of capitalism which have gone through previous periodisation: Postmodernism is both a product of and has produced 'consumer capitalism', having moved on, from and upon previous 'modernist' periods of late nineteenth century 'liberal' capitalism which was largely localised and personalised, to 20th century 'organised' capitalism institutionalised through the growth of the welfare state which led to corporate relations between unions, business and workers and then late 20th century 'disorganised' capitalism working in conditions provided by new information technologies 1.
The post modern also brings back the literary approach to the particularities of time and place, reasserting the power of the text, as well as the blurring of the cultural and the material. Harvey talks about how 'creative entreprenurialism had been harnessed to the task of producing fantasy and disguise, while behind all the churnings of codes and fashions lurked a certain 'imperialism of taste' that stood to recreate in new ways the very hierarchy of values and significations that changing fashions otherwise undermined' (Harvey 1987, p.6). He talks about the 'plasticity of human personality through the malleability of appearances and surfaces'. Many would see the level of performativity required through such processes as quality assurance in tertiary education or 'effective schools' or the production of the CV in performance management, as examples of 'plasticity, fantasy and disguise'. Value is gained through image and design and not the product itself.
I want to consider in this paper whether the 'post modern condition', brought about by the collapsing of time / space, the dissolution of national boundaries and the globalisation of market economies arising out of new informational technologies, is producing 'new' social formations in the education sector in Australia. I will draw on recent research in all sectors - schools, TAFE and Universities. 2 What are the relationships between economic and social restructuring? How are women being positioned in these new times?
Australia in the globalisation of capitalism
As a useful starting point, I have looked at Lash and Urry's (1994) focus upon the process of flexible accumulation in the circulation of capital. If production occurs in one time and space, commodities acquire mobility to flow through space and time. They depict three circuits: money capital, productive capital and of commodity capital. Productive capital is means of production and labour power ( which is the fourth circuit)(p. 1). They see the 1990s as undergoing a move to consumer capitalism and post modernism. Whereas before the modes of capital were the objects and labour power the subject, now routes of both objects and subjects of capital have increased velocity. 'With an ever quickening turnover the objects as well as cultural artefacts
become disposable and depleted of meaning. '(pp. 2-3).
Their discussion is insightful in that they refer to the ways in which the process of flexible accumulation articulates with information technologies in different historical contexts. They argue that there the process of flexible accumulation emphasises flexible production in West Germany and Japan, where information technology articulates closely with production systems and a larger industrial working class. This has been possible because Germany is a relatively more national economy compared to the internationalism of USA and UK ( and I would suggest Australia). Also the service sector is small because of the strong family unit and low female labour force participation. In Sweden and Australia, services are carried out by the state and the market in the USA. Germany and Japan are less down the path of individualistic consumption. Germany has undergone a very modernist approach to post modern flexible conditions, calling upon rigid institutional structures to produce greater fluidities.
By contrast the demise of manufacturing in England and USA with emphasis on flexible consumption because of failure to articulate technology with industry competitively has led to reduced working class (as in Australia as the manufacturing sector has been shifted offshore in search of cheaper less regulated labour in SE Asia). The emphasis on information technology linked to consumption means a larger consumer service sector and a larger body of managerial/ professional middle class. That is, emphasis is on informational sectors themselves as sources of labour. Therefore there is a larger middle mass in corporatist states such as West Germany ( largely skilled working class) and smaller middle mass in neo-liberal states which takes on the core-periphery model:
Such nations will have exacerbated class polarisation of the university-educated information and advanced service sector professionals and a large number of 'bum jobs' in the downgraded services and manufacturing sectors at the bottom end of the social stratification ladder(Lash and Urry 1994 p. 319).
This in turn has particular ramifications for new age/gender /class formations. There have been arguments about the decline of class- that there is less working class consciousness, reduced propensity to be unionists, more 'flexible' workers, more promiscuous voting behaviours rather than traditional partisan loyalties. (In Australia the swinging voter has increased from 9-23 % in the last 10 years). There is also evidence of the emergence of new underclass in particular societies (UK and USA and Australia) of women and children with the feminisation of poverty resulting from female headed families, a widening of income distribution, reduction of youth employment opportunities particularly for young males, all at a time that national per capita income is increasing.
The above differences are related to significant changes in employment patterns in consumer capitalism. The flexible consumption model which emphasises the service sector also encourages part time casualisation of labour at the periphery, where individuals are subcontracted out into an expanding periphery to service the core. This reduces full time employment opportunities for both men and women, but particularly calls upon women's skills in service areas. Hence the expansion of women in labour market, but only in part time casual labour. The latest predictions are that two-thirds of all labour market growth in Australia between 1995 and 2005 will be of women. Given that currently women constitute 75% of part time workers, and the trend to casualisation, this is no surprise (Women and Work 1995). It also
means that 40% of employees have family responsibilities (Women and Family Unit, DEET). The state corporatist approach in West Germany and Japan which favours reduced class stratification and larger middle mass, does so through their exclusion of the 'the other'- by gender and ethnicity. Germany and Japan actively exclude ethnic groups from corporate membership and national citizenship altogether on that basis ( Yuval Davis 1993). So while there is high -value-added labour the corporatist middle mass of men, there is low labour force participation rate of women'.
Furthermore, in the UK and USA ( and I would also include Australia) Lash and Urry argue that there has been a 'huge institutionalisation of reflexivity' in the service dominated economy. 'In such economies, individual reflexivity is institutionalised through the development of various complex services, including the therapy services' (Lash and Urry, 1990 , p. 322 and Giddens 1991, 1992). Reflexivity is not just about ethics and cognition but also aesthetics, in which the individual is active in producing and consuming- in being and becoming reflexive subjects at the same time they are becoming the mobile objects of capital and images. The process of reflexive accumulation is through both production systems and information structures. 'In information structures cultural capital or information-processing capacities can be accumulated ( through training and education) and spent as information flows are applied in problem solving' ( p. 108) The essential contradictory aspect is the increased speed and intensity of information flows and the increased reflexivity.
This also has implications for the ways people organise their lives and work. Castells speaks of 'The shift away from the centrality of the organisational unit to the network of information and decision. In other words, flows, rather than organisations, become the units of work, decision and output accounting' ( Castells, 1989, 142). Castells talks about 'the transformation of the flows of power into the power of flows' (1989, 171). Lash and Urry extend this beyond flows of people ( in terms of migrants,tourists, refugees etc) to flows of ideas, images, technologies and capital. These flows have had significant impact through the 'economies of signs and space' in particular periods. The questions these theorists raise are : Can we therefore readily label any 'society' at any instance as post Fordist, post industrialist? Maybe we need to look cross culturally how these overlapping, contingent, non synchronist flows work in specific historical contexts. That is how the flows of capital, people, ideas, images works in specific cultural contexts and with specific histories.
Lash and Urry's analysis is on the one hand powerful in explaining changing relationships between the global and the local in the redefinition of the public relations of capital and labour as mediated through new information technologies. On the other hand it retains the Marxist problematic which while making reference to gender, ignores the private, and thereby maintains, as do other neo Marxist critical theorists ( e.g Habermas see critique by Fraser) the fundamental public/private dichotomy embedded in their analysis. Likewise, what is significantly absent in most restructuring theories is the ways in which gender, race and ethnicity work at the global and local levels. While there is attention paid to the universalising features of global shifts in capital e.g. flexible accumulation, this is prioritised over the gender /race/ class patterns evident in these shifts.
Thus the growth of information can be either repressive or liberating. It can mean the ingovernability and/or the spreading of knowledge to improve access, reduce nations states and collapse civil society. The
new info -tech can produce new forms of community, new skills and new loci of power away from traditional institutions of class, family, education, politics...( note that gender not mentioned as a loci of power). And /or it can 'lead to new forms of control and erode crafts of critical reading and writing'(324). Agger refers to 'fast capitalism' which 'sets of the Foucauldian power/knowledge dystopia in which moral and practical knowledge is transformed into cognitive and technical systems which normalise and regulate what was previously private' (Aggar 1989). He suggests that 'A visual culture is publically controllable in a way that a literary culture is not'.
And what of the relationship between the state and the individual in these ebbs and flows? Is the role of the state being 'hollowed out'- upwards to superregional or international bodies or down to regional or local states in private sector- as Anna Yeatman suggests? In such a process lies he potential to supplant the scoercive regulative and paternalistic state with localised states which embody pluralist democracies. Or the diaspora can produce a widening of inequality between locaties and zones, even within nation states, leaving a weaker state to resolve the problems of an increasingly residualised public sector. There are a variety of societal phenomenon occurring simultaneously and in a dynamic manner- cultural, political aesthetic and even personal.
One aspect is a new sense of spatial diversity which undercuts the state. What do we mean by local? There are also a range of localities : 'households, housing or 'neighborhood' communities, school catchment areas, ethnic and religious communities, classes at local, regional, national and international scales'( p. 10), political party districts, local ( and supra local) labour markets spatially differentiated by class, race and gender; the state at district, county, regional and national scales; firms at all spatial scales and of all shapes; extra local patterns between ethnic, religious, class and emigratory populations and voluntary organisations and social movements' ( pp. 10-11). There are a number of environments in which we operate- physical ( and material conditions), built, institutional, individual lived experience and life history( cultural) and collective and individual processes. Community and locality is therefore 'invented' as well as imagined (Anderson, pp. 12-13).
For example, Ruth Fincher points out in her social mapping in Melbourne the power of the spatial and how it operates locally : 'the local labour market and the local state contribute significantly to the ways in which class and gender are experienced by residents and workers in urban communities'( Fincher, 1989, p. 93). The existence or nonexistence of community based services such as transport, child care limit women's employment possibilities. Fincher indicates how the inactivity of the state can exacerbate the gendered and classed differences in work participation, and links poor community resourcing for dependents with increased outworkers amongst women. Bagguley et al (1990) argue: 'Gender relations infect and alter class relations and are importantly linked to workplace organisation'.
While both class and gender relations are different spatially ( as temporally), class relations at the local level cannot be understood without reference to gender relations and patriarchal practices' ( Fincher, 1989, p. 28). Gender relations in particular places are altered by the process of restructuring, and the process of restructuring is informed by existing gender relations. Given that men are largely the conceivers of the restructuring processes, they are in the position to protect their interests, as much unconsiously as consciously, in terms of who is consulted, what is laid open to be
changed and how concepts are redefined ( e.g. merit, skill, flexibility etc)(Cockburn 1992). This is borne out by Louise Johnson's of a particular firm in Geelong, Victoria, which indicates that while at one level capital accumulation is a generator of particular local configurations, that a closer longitudinal study throughout the 1980s, during which the company went through various ownerships (multinational, local and national), there also existed a patriarchal economy which changed over time due to local factors such as locational decisions, fibre usage, new equipment, resistance and then wider capital labour events. She argues that 'what overrides the shifts are broader changes in the ascribed values of women's and men's labour'( Johnson. 1993, p. 66). In a conservative regional community such as Geelong undergoing a financial crisis and high unemployment due in part to the collapse of a particular local credit company and the downsizing of Ford motors, the employment of men was seen to be more valued than of women and the feminisation of various industries was halted if not reverted.
Therefore in any analysis of the ways in which global discourses about restructuring work at the level of the local, the issue of spatial and temporal particularity is significant, given the ways in which restructuring is being framed in Australia. Belinda Probert talks about how capital uses a variety of strategies to increase profit and weaken labour ranging from shifting production offshore or to new sources of labour to less confrontationist and less unionised and cheaper labour (casual, women, migrants). State intervention has shifted away from the social legislation, political legitimation and the mediation of labour -capital agreements (as in industrial relations) to facilitating the market e,g, enterprise bargaining). Anna Yeatman describes this as the shift from the welfare to the contractualist state.
Where does education fit into such an analysis?
Education has been restructured as an arm of national economic policy in most western liberal democracies during the past decade. Restructuring education in Australia commenced in 1987, signalled by Australia Reconstructed and the Dawkins Green paper on Higher Education and inVictoria the Next Decade (1987). The context was one of a national ecomic crisis, high current account deficit, high unemployment, and a susceptibility to global markets as a consequence of an emphasis on non-productive inventment and quick returns in a deregulated market. Neo classical notions of human capital theory have informed the national and state educational reform agendas informing all sectors : the 'unified national tertiary system', the National Training Reform Agenda and the trend towards self managing schools. Universities have been challenged for their elitism and failure to meet demands of new workplace e,g, teacher education; schools are blamed for their failure to provide the multiple literacies and competencies required in the workplace; and TAFE is reprimanded for its emphasis on failure to address the service sector or assume a more broad based, flexible notion of skill which provides pathways from school or work into higher level employment.
These 'fast capitalist' texts suggest that an investment in state educational systems geared to increase skill levels which will improve productivity and give Australia a competitive advantage. In particular, flexible specialisation with the shift to smaller units of production and high tech are seen to require more literate competencies. But as Luke points out, there is no close correlation between levels of education, literacy and credentials and productivity, both when comparisons between OECD countries ( e.g. Australia and USA) and Western capitalist and Asian tigers or Japan are made (Luke, 1992).
There are a range of structural, cultural (industrial relations, wage structures, female participation rates in labour market, social traditions etc ) as well as educational factors which contribute to national productivity, as Lash and Urry have indicated in their discussion of flexible accumulation.
Education has, at various moments in Australian history, been discursively constructed as both the problem and the solution to national economic problems (the 1890s prior to Federation, 1930s depression, and again in the 1980s). More specifically, education has been the problem, and training has been the solution. But what is different about the 1990s is the context out of which and within which this discourse emerges. When education was first linked formally to the economy in the late 1890's, it was in the context of Germany's imperialist urges to seek new international markets in Papua New Guinea, public debates over Federation, White Australia and a declining birth rate, that the universal system of compulsory education was extended into a state secondary system. Dual strands of education were established by 1910 in most Australian states: the liberal education strand which led into the professions and the vocational education strand which gave access to the skilled trades. By contrast the vocational discourse of the 1930s was in the context of high unemployment, the growth of fascism, and an emerging welfare state which produced a more democratised version of secondary education which saw citizenship as a critical element to protect democracy. In both periods, it was believed that economic growth derived from increased levels of education to all and that individual investment in education was rewarded by full employment, the basis of human capital theory. Education was viewed as a public good. In the 1990s, while the argument is still about national productivity and international competitiveness and skills, it is in the context of globalisation of markets, new information technologies, shifting national and economic boundaries and ethnic fragmentation and creating a new national identity. It is also a period in which education has come to be viewed increasingly as a private good in the context of the shift to user pays and privatisation of provision. This is a significantly different reading of human capital and skill than at the time of Federation and the post war settlement.
That the liberal meritocracy favoured the white male elites in both professions and trades was of little concern as others could readily gain employment in a period of unprecedented economic growth of the 1950s and 1960s, the period in which human capital theory was developed most coherently and applied in policy. But as labour market theorists have pointed out, while there was this cooperation between labour and capital on the basis of greater state regulation, concentration of accumulation and steady capital growth, some forms of labour power were utilised on contractual and competitive basis alone ( women teachers, once married, were forced to resign and then were re-employed as temporaries without career paths). These marginalised groups,who did not have access to the promise of the consumption oriented life style, gave rise to the new social movements of the 1960s arising out of inequalities of race, gender, and ethnicity ( Yeatman, 1990).
Women, immigrants and Aboriginal people were not included under the rubric of the 'new citizen worker' active in the post world war two Keynesian settlement. Gramsci saw Fordism and Americanism of the modern era, particularly post World War 2, as constructing a new type of worker and new type of man(sic). Work is 'inseparable from a specific mode of living, and thinking and feeling life'. Questions of sexuality, the family, forms of moral coercion and consumerism as well as state action are all bound up with the search to create a new type
of worker ( Harvey in pp. 126 quotes Gramsci Prison Notebook ). He also points out how both Right and Left believed in the state regulation of labour power, although with different intent, particularly during periods of war and depression, but that the modernisation process was the dominant discourses for state intervention (and a reinvention of neo- colonialism by World Bank and IMF in 'developing' nations). As Fordism became the mode of regulation in the post war period capital reduced its expectations of the rate of accumulation and organised labour took on new roles with regard to regulating the production processes and the labour market ( in Australia not until after World War 2) largely through cooperation but often with outbreaks of resistance and disruption.
Part of this regulative process was the complicity between male unionists and employers to regulate women's labour through legislation claiming to 'protect' them (Briskin 1993; Cockburn, 1983). Indeed, Brown and Rushbrook (1995) argue that the privileging of the linkages between awards, skills margin and credentials, further reinforced with the introduction of scientific management principles into larger firms and corporations, increasingly deskilled those on the margins ( see also Blackmore 1986). Both Anderson (1995, p. 17) and Rushbrook (1995) suggest that in the drive to gain legitimacy for technical education, for example, the interests of the lesser skilled worker, the operatives ( largely constituted by immigrants and women and until the 1970s youth) have been ignored in this award based version of skill. Women workers, lesser unionised and casualised, have only gain the benefits that the stronger unions have been prepared to fight for, albeit in a paternalistic manner. Seddon (1993) points out how both the elitist 'education' and 'training' hierarchies, consolidated and expanded during the 1950s and 1960s, disenfranchised women and 'others'. The Kangan report in 1975 ( p. 312) indicates that 64.8% of workers in the category 'tradesmen, production process workers and labourers (of whom 60% were men and 94% women) did not possess a publicaly recognised work credential'. Women only constituted 9% of apprenticeships and then primarily in haridressing and only after 1949 (Pocock, 1988). Likewise in clerical work, most girls were employed prior to completion of proficiency or intermediate certificate, on the basis of their specific vocational skills in typing and shorthand (Blackmore 1986). Certification, the formal linkage between education and work, therefore provided pathways for the white male elite into the education or training hierarchies and it was based upon their experience that human capital theory was to be premised and upon which current human capital theory is modelled.
The new social movements of the late 1960s and 1970s produced other demands upon education. The growth of the colleges of advanced education and community education sector, in particular arose out of changing social forces such as the womens movement. As Jenny Angwin points out:
The field of adult literacy began with the work of volunteer tutors and gradually became institutionalized in Victoria mainly through the Council for Adult Education(CAE) and the TAFE system within outreach and Community access programs. Whether working as unpaid volunteers or as paid sessional teachers, for many years it was extremely difficult for women to gain either full employment or a survival income from adult literacy work alone. In Victoria for example, as women's work more geenrally it has remained outside the main structures of the educational system, outside the mainstream in programs and funding and even in terms of the buildings in which the classes are held (Angwin 1994).
Dominant discourses in education during the 1970s and 1980s were about the intrinsic value of education, community, access and participation eg, in schools, Participation and Equity program and in tertiary education the abolition of fees in 1974 encouraged mature age women. Likewise, the ALBE sector which self generated throughout the 1970s and 1980s was a highly feminised sector, both teachers and students. As Angwin and Sanguinetti have argued, much of this expansion was in adult literacy areas which, in seeking to define a field of practice, drew upon other educational sectors, particularly school education. There developed within the adult education sector a shared perception about good teaching as being student centred, curriculum based on student needs, a holistic view of student, valuing student experience, negotiated learning, self assessment, reflection, open access, independent learning. (Lee and Wickert, 1994, p. 12). These were also principles underlying many of the curriculum initiatives in schools during the 1980s in the early stages of the development of the VCE. Universities at this point were relatively untouched by such educational initiatives in curriculum and pedagogy, being largely unaccountable to their students or the community. Yet some universities, Melbourne in particular, were able to define through strategic intervention in school assessment and curriculum reform, what was valued knowledge in schools through the social selection processes of certification (Blackmore, 1992). So while schools have been tightly linked to universities through the certification process, the links with the vocational training sector, have been loose.
While valued forms of knowledge were male defined through historical cultural and institutional processes in universities (science, maths and more recently technology), the development of the Vocational Education and Training sector was premised upon a Anglo-white-male metals-based craft union approach to skill definition which arose out of the development of the industrial relations system established in 1904 with the Conciliation and Arbitration Act. This act facilitated the negotiations between employers and more powerful male dominated unions about the distribution of profit and definitions of skill to be institutionalised throughout the economy, just as the professions have been able through similar exclusionary agreements between the state and universities, control access to law and medicine ( Larsen, 1977). Skill, as merit, is not about technical competency or mental or manual ability- it is a social construct which favours particular attributes over others(Blackmore, 1992; Poynton, 1993; Jackson, 1991). Just as the Colleges of Advanced Education, community based and with a higher proportionof women faculty and students, were positioned as lesser in relation to Universities, so too the emerging areas of ALBE and access programs positioned a lesser within trade dominated TAFE. It is the blue collar skilled male tradesman human capital model of skill which has unproblematically informed various reports about competencies in education such as Mayer, Finn and Carmichael, reports in which school educators were notably absent (Collins, 1993). Not surprisingly, the university sector and the professions were able to defend themselves from the colonising imperatives of the trade based competency movement. At the same time, micro economic reform and the need for unions to maintain their position in the corporatists state with declining membership has led to agreements between labour and capital for enterprise bargaining and award restructuring premised upon the Swedish corporatist model.
The global justification for restructuring has assumed, I suggest, an optimistic version of the nature and needs of post modern society. The logic of the discourse is that education has not served the needs of the economy well; that the upgrading skills of workers will make them more flexible and therefore productive; that the large public
educational bureaucracies are inefficient and therefore we must emulate best practice in the private sector. It is argued that devolution allows the providers to be more flexible and thus cater for consumer needs. The dominant strand of this educational reform discourse to make a closer correspondence between economic needs and educational provision has sat uncomfortably with the increasingly marginalised discourse articulating more traditional Labor party concerns about social justice and equity. Equity has largely be a last minute inclusion ( as in the case of the Australian Vocational Certificate see Henry and Taylor 1995), or being included only after considerable lobbying ( as with the conversion of the Green Paper into the White Paper on Higher Education) ( Blackmore and Kenway 1988); or totally, ignored. Then, when considered, it is usually an 'add on but do not stir' approach ie. Indeed, as one university employer stated in an enterprise bargaining discussion with unions, 'Equity is a luxury in these times of constraint'. Yet, restructuring has captured some equity discourses, largely those that can be framed in an economistic manner. Hence the recent call upon the notion of Managing Diversity in the Karpin report and its growing dissemination across all education sectors is being promoted as the means to deliver equity. But it is couched in terms of best management practice to increase productivity and not out of some moral imperative about equality in work and economic independence is a citizenship right. Likwise award restructuring has been presented as offering an opportunity to address issues of equity and comparative worth in the workplace. Valerie Pratt, Director of the Affirmative Action Agency spoke in 1989 of 'affirmative restructuring'. Award restructuring would, she suggested , provide an opportunity to recognise women by evaluation and renegotiating entry requirements, skills assessment, broadbanding, access to traiing, access to career paths, award provisions, work and job redesign and representation on consultation ( Pratt, 1989,11-12).
Early studies suggest that the promises are not forthcoming. Indeed, some argue that restructuring has had more detrimental than beneficial effects for the majority of women(Currie, 1994). Despite the possibility that enterprise bargaining would allow new issues to be brought into the area of negotiation of wages and conditions (e.g. child care), and union pressure has sought o develop family friendly workplaces as part of these agreements, reports on early enterprise bargains suggest while women are more likely to be consulted in feminised industries, they also have a relatively lower wage than in male dominated industries (Stephen, 1995). That is, there is an inverse relationship between women's relative earnings and the percentage of women in the industry, with male dominated industries showing increases and women dominated industries showing decreases. Enterprise bargaining only covers 55% of federal award employees and 20% of all wage and salary earners and has littel impact at all on casual labour( Stephen 1995). Kelly and Davidson's (1995) analysis of the Annual Enterprise Bargaining Report indicates that the extent of bargaining in female dominated workplaces was low because of the low coverage of female dominated workplaces in federal awards. And that where enterprise bargaining did occur, agreements in female dominated industries were more likely to be detrimental to women than in male dominated industries. That is, there was a trade off of annual, sick and family leave and hour flexibility against pay claims, all which worked against women who bear the brunt of family responsibility. There was an increase in management prerogative and decline in family friendly hours of work, with women less able to work overtime than males. Any examples of improved entitlements in family leave, child
care, job sharing etc were often with loss of wages( Kelly and Davidson, 1995; Green, 1994; Caruso,1995). Restructuring has come therefore to a cost for women workers. Flexibility has meant employers have greater flexibility not workers (Lever Tracy, 1988; Pollert,1991). The local /global articulation of devolved governance
The combination of devolved systems of educational governance within a market context with national policy agendas which link education to the economy have particular constraining effects in the practice of educational work. This is regardless of the paradoxes and contradictions that occur both within and between policies as much negotiated texts, as exmplified in gender equity policies which work to provide greater opportunities for women at the same time other policies, in particular lack of child care, actively undermine the material conditions of many women's situation.
The characteristics of educational restructuring have been * shift in educational costs from state to individual through user pays
* devolved systems of educational governance with centralised decentralisation (Watkins 1992) * educational markets (Kenway et al 1993) * blurring public /private in education and training (Anderson 1995) * vocationalisation of education, in which education is subsumed under training and not vv ( Blackmore 1991) * small state and residualisaton of the public sector(Preston 1993) * accountability from periphery to centre and not vv * competitive individualism
Running through these educational reform agendas has been several uneasy tensions between centralision/ decentralisation; efficiency / equity; public/ private; education / training. These policy texts reflect ambiguity and the ongoing tension between postmodernism (post Fordist) and modernism (Fordist), change and stability (Hargreaves, 1994; Gale, 1995). How then are these agendas being read by those at the chalkface. How do the claims for flexibility, skilling and equity work when such policies hit the ground?
There have been five general responses - downsizing, outsourcing, downstreaming, mainstreaming and feedback ( Allen, 1994; Australian Universities Review, 1992). These has particular equity concerns.
Downsizing has been the major response to the reduction of public expenditure in education from 6% to 5.3% of GDP ( ranking us 11/15 of OECD). This has led to different strategies: Universities, have introduced administrative fees then HECS, wand policies which favoured school leavers over mature age students. Confronted with reduced DEET funding for places, universities now seek international and local markets and upfront fees. Staff are expected as part of their load to consider the marketing of their intellectual labour, to bring in fee paying students. In Victoria, the per capita expenditure on state education has decreased to lowest in Australia. We see in the state system of education the loss of over 8000 teachers, and the consequent intensification of labour. Schools are increasingly reliant upon communities, voluntary labour and other agencies to undertake welfare and 'extra curricular' work and by privatising costs with increased 'voluntary' fees to parents. Likewise, the 'open training' market initiated in 1990 is rapidly privatising the work of TAFE and leading TAFE to compete with the growing private providers in labour market programs. With the shift away from community to training orientated
TAFE provision, the previous access pathways taken by women returning to work have been undermined.
To outsource is to shift away from permanent full time employment to sessional, part time contractual work in order to gain flexibility. It is now policy to have a minimum of contract labour ( up to 30%) in all organisations. As Piore and Sabel suggest, this indicates the move to flexible specialisation, in which core elements of work are contracted out, thus allowing greater organisational flexibiity as such contractual arrangements can be readily severed when the market shifts. In state systems of education, various Liberal governments have sought to shift teachers out of a centralised award structure towards individual contracts, a move thwarted in Vic and more recently in WA, by moving into the federal award. Universities and TAFE increasingly rely upon contract and sessional labour to deliver courses ( Grimes, 1991; Carnegie, 1992; Barlow, 1989).
To downstream is to 'fax the crisis down the line' as Peter Watkins(1992) succinctly states. Devolution occurs at the national, state and organisational level. DEET has devolved management to universities which have in turn devolved management to Faculties, who in turn devolve it to Schools. Likewise in schools, the shrinking of the DSE at the centre has produced a hard core, while decisionmaking is devolved to the school with global budgeting, which in turn through progam budgeting devolves financial and program management to units which compete against each other for limited resources. Thus claims for funding for arts and music now compete with basic literacy and numeracy programs; and welfare staff against LOTE enrichment programs( McRae, 1995). It is cheaper to employ casual, inexperienced para professional staff than permanent experience teachers ( eg. in integration). In TAFE, while each college has relative autonomy, they compete for funds by tendering to the central body ( OTFE). There is also a rapidly expanding private provider sector ( out sourced) who compete with TAFE on a competitive tendering basis in labour market program provision such that the largest provider is a church welfare organisation. But the smaller the unit of decisionmaking, the fewer the degrees of freedom available because of specific historical, structural and cultural aspects of each unit of decisionmaking and boundaries. It does mean that competition for limited resources occurs at the grass roots level. It also means that it positions various disadvantaged groups in competition with each other--do you hire more sessional staff or provide PD for untenured contract staff or promotion for tenured staff. Equity issues quickly drop off the agenda in such compEtitive contexts ( eg. Gordon, 1994 a & b).
Mainstreaming. The trend has been since 1987 to mainstream gender equity. In ffect this has meant dismantling units specifically with regard to gender equity and to shift them into the mainstream eg. EO units in Universities now become part of personnel (Blackmore, 1991; Weineke and Durham. 1992). While this was in part recognition of the readiness for such units to be marginal to decisionmaking processes, to given them all the responsibility for equity issues, and for their lack of power in institutional politics, it has in effect weakened the equity impetus. The aim of mainstreaming is to make equity the responsibility of all managers. In effect, equity becomes the responsibiity of everyone and therefore no one. This mainstreaming has also occurred without professional development support or training for principals, managers in TAFE of Heads of School in Universities. So even with the best intent, managers lack specific understanding of the issues, strategies and expected outcomes and indeed often quite resistant to EO ( Cockburn, 1992).
Feedback: On the grounds that accountability is essential as decisions are devolved, feedback is critical for management control. Devolution to the smaller units at the periphery requires strong feedback machanisms to the core: outcomes based evaluation ( e.g. standardised assessment), university profiles/ school charters, performance management, quality assurance, national guidelines e.g priorities in universities, curriculum frameworks in schools, competency based training in TAFE. Indeed, these centralising tendencies are stronger than the decentralising tendencies. Furthermore, the accountability mechanisms, in seeking comparability across units, have normalising and standardising effects. While devolution and coporate management have been the administrative means to encourage diversity, flexibility and autonomy, these processes now occur in a market context. Ironically, while the claim is that the market produces diversity, it has normalising effects in that there is a unidimensional and universalising images of what constitutes 'good education'- ivy covered university; well disciplined, well dressed and academically successful school student; and multiskilled, flexible and competent worker- become hegemonic.
Embedded in these policies of restrcuturing and reform are partciular worldviews. In a period of eprceoved financial crisis, these have assuamed a narrow economistic version of the education-work relationship centred around rational choice theories of the market. These are unidimensional and limited because they are premised upon the experiences of white male elites in the professions and trades. The principles central to the economic rationalist (and corporate management as the means) agenda are those of neoclassical economic theory: scarcity, choice, self maximising behaviours and competitive individualism. As Myra Strober(1995) explains : mainstream economists have a particular world view which can be summarised as the 'the atomistic individual making rational choices within a neutral market to maximise their material gain'. The context in which this market works is always that of scarcity, which creates a demand - supply mechanism which seeks some form of equilibrium. Strober critiques the metanarrative of malestream economic theory which fails to adequately explain global features: income inequality, higher rates of poverty amongst women and children, occupational segregation, discrimination, undervaluing of domestic labour and women's work etc. She argues that economics is not value free and objective, but is a socially constructed field of knowledge drawn from the experiences of white male elites. One would assume that they themselves emerged, as mushrooms, overnight, without any childhood or dependency. Indeed, if women and other disadvantaged groups, the majority, were considered, it would be more objective! . Likewise Prue Hyman (1994) argues, neo classical economics emphasises the choices not the constraints of such a system. Discrimination is therefore the result. A feminist economics positions power and poverty at the core.
In citing the growing empirical evidence which suggests restructuring is more likely to have a detrimental rather than a beneficial impact for women, some advantages have arisen from educational restructuring and the new training agendas for students, and female students in particular such as the Recognition of Prior Learning and better articulation between universities, TAFE and schools. But these have been outweighed by the reduction in commmunity based adult education, the privatisation of costs, uncertainty and unrealistic time frames in provision, as well as behaviourist models of pedagogy(Sanguineti, 1995; Angwin , forthcoming).
Three Sites of Restructuring
Schools Globally there has been a trend towards devolved systems of school education to the self managing school. The premise has been that particular schools are better able to address the particular needs of their students. The claims of self management are that it imparts greater capacity to make efficient and effective decisions to best meet the specific needs of the schools population, greater professional autonomy to teachers and 'real' leadership to the principal ( Schools of the Future 1993).
I want to focus upon three trends arising out of this restructuring. Since 1992 in most Australian school systems, teachers have only been employed on contract. In Victoria, over 8000 teachers have taken voluntary redundancy packages in the past three years. While as yet individual contracts for currently employed teachers have been thwarted, the Professional Recognition Program requires teachers to face evaluation on an annual basis if they wish to transfer or gain promotion. Principals have been given greater power over staffing recruitment, promotion and job allocation as well as budgets. They are now positioned as mediators between school and Department, parent and school, student and teacher, but within clear line management and curriculum guidelines eg. Curriculum Standards Frameworks together with 'strong' accountability mechanisms - performance contracts, school charters, and standardised tests- which provide feedback from the periphery to the centre. In a study called Learning to Change, we found that while teachers felt deskilled and devalued by these processes, that the issues which most impacted on their practice and capacity to work professionally was the intensification of labour, increased class sizes and less time ie., the material conditions of their work, which are indeed the material conditions of student's learning.
A second aspect of restructuring was the devolution of curriculum and professional development responsibilies away from the centre and the regions to the school. This meant that women, who largely made up the middle management in curriculum and professional development, were either lost to the system by leaving it due to lack of career opportunities or returned to schools, where they had difficulty gaining equivalent positions ( often principal class level) due to lack of immediate past school administrative experience. This 'hollowing out' process of the system has produced a loss of institutional memory about curriculum and educational reform.
A third aspect of restructuring of the state system was to throw open the principal class positions as schools were reclassified after amalgamations and closures. The period from 1991-5 therefore sees a significant rise in the number of women in principal class in Victorian government schools : from 21% to 31%, partly as a consequence of the freeing up of positions; partly the numerical dominance of eligible women; partly the high expectations and aspirations of many women developed through 1980s equal opportunity policies; and partly due to women have been encouraged to take up leadership in schools through a statewide Women and Leadership Program (1993-5) which offers a range of strategiesto encourage women ( Blackmore, 1995). At the same time, there has been a reduction at the centre of women in executive positions. Here women constitute only 18% of the executive service and most are located at the lower levels of middle management ( compared to 20.6% in the Victorian Pblic Service). Women therefore are being positioned as the emtional managers of a system in crisis, and are unable to undertake the type of educational work many were appointed for as they confront the daily dilemmas of management in a self managing school (Blackmore, 1994).
The overall effect is that there is a feminisation of educational work at the level of the school, where the hard decisions are made within constrained budgets and a re-masculinisation at the centre, where policy and finance is determined : the core-periphery model. The above is all within the context of reduced finding, closures, restructured career paths, increased class sizes, curriculum standards frameworks and the introduction of teacher appraisal and performance management. My research on women in leadership in the system indicates a high level of conflict between the line- management expectations of the system and their preferred ways of working, at some significant personal cost (Blackmore 1994). Caldwell's study (1994) indicated women principals' work longer work hours than their male counterparts. While this gendered division of labour between conception and execution, administration and teaching, in education is not new ( Blackmore 1992), the emerging pattern in devolved systems of school governance locally and globally, works against the dominant rhetoric of 'a level playing field' which accompanies restructuring. More specifically, local patterns indicate disturbing differences with a widening gap between resource rich and resource poor schools as costs are increasingly privatised and school communities are expected to raise funds or gain business sponsorship. Women principals are' located largely in Western suburbs: localities with high ethnic, socieconomic and racial diversity (Blackmore, 1994). The paradox therefore, is that women in positions of 'power' at the local level are mediating the restructuring of education in ways which devalues the work of women educators more generally.
Universities The Dawkins reform agenda initiated in 1987 with the Green Paper (1987) and then the White Paper : Higher Education (1988) led to the rationalisation and amalgamation of the dual system of universities and Colleges of Advanced education. The stated intention was to produce a unified system of tertiary education which would open up access to tertiary education, provide improved educational provision in regional areas, increase applied research productivity and link it more closely to industry needs in education - industry partnerships, and improve articulation between universities and TAFE. While some of this has occurred, there is still a great reluctance by industry to invest either in training or research; and the instrumental and vocational emphasis of the reforms are seen to actively undermine the infrastructure of pure research, which, in the long term, may be more 'economically' productive than short term gain. Research has also become part of these contractual relationships which raise issues of intellectual property and the ways in which the research methodologies are being shaped given preference by policymakers for quantitative studies.
This restructuring has signficantly effected education, nursing and the humanities, given its applied and instrumental focus on the hard knowledges of science and technology ( although labour market trends indicate that it is the service sector which is expanding, and that Arts graduates have equal if not better employment records). Based on short term trends in the demand for teachers, teacher education faculties are being reduced. In one University, the Faculty of Education, due to budgetary constraints placed by the national and university 'squeeze' on education and redirection of funds into other faculties ( e.g engineering etc), failed to extend any contracts to 23 untenured staff in 1994, most women and many who had been on one year contracts for up to 10 years. This was, by one manager, not seen to be an industrial or equity issue as 'they knew they were on contracts' ( as though this was their preferred way of employment rather than what most saw as a way of entering academia). As Margaret Prior (1995) comments, the notion of budgetary constraints is one which appeases
'organisational guilt'.
The latest NTEU report, by Castleman et al called Limited Access (1995), points out that there is a trend towards both feminisation and casualisation of academic labour, as Universities, seeking to redirect their course offerings to new niche markets overseas and locally, desire staffing flexibility. In a clever co-option of the discourse of equity, the Vice Chancellors union have argued that removing the tenure of all academics and shifting to contracts would be more equitable for women academics, as it would open up positions now held by tenured male academics, a position strongly rejected.
TAFE/ ALBE The TAFE sector, as Barbara Pocock pointed out in a 1988 report Changing Systems: Women Work and TAFE, is highly gender segmented by stream and course. Women students are concentrated in the non-accredited, non-trade and prepatory and access courses. While TAFE has always been more open to the demands of the labour market (and all its discriminatory practices in terms of recruitment and training) in its educational provision and therefore less in control of its curriculum, there has been a shift in a market orientation with the notion of a community college now supplanted by that of a provider to the consumer. The consumer is now industry not the individual.
Likewise in the expanding Adult and Basic Literacy Education sector, 'Women constitute the majority of teachers, administrators and students in ALBE but it is a field defined largely by what it is not : non-formal, non-award, non-vocational, non-accredited, non-mainstream and non-funded' (Blackmore, Angwin and Leavold 1994).
The Adult literacy area emerged out of the need to assist women who had lived in Australia but never learnt English- many were not in paid work, those who were tended to be in skilled factory work. Adult literacy imparted a level of personal power and social contact which had been previously unavailable to these women. By the 1980s pathways developed into employment through access programs. These early courses were highly flexible, allowing women to negotiate curriculum and access, and usually over 6 to 12 months. The field changed significantly by 1990 with high unemployment and the demise of the manufacturing industry. While their communication skills were much improved, the possibilities for employment disappeared. In particular, potential areas of public sector employment in community service , health and welfare with councils, particularly for women with professional qualifications, disappeared with amalgamations and privatisation of council services and reduced public sector services. The following scenario emerged as common in our 1994 study investigating the impact of restructuring in adult and higher education(Blackmore, Angwin and Leavold 1995).
Many of the women educators in the ALBE sector had entered the field of adult literacy and access/ community programs out of secondary teaching and ESL. Some shifted into ALBE, largely untrained, on the assumption that being trained in ESL and as English teachers was appropriate background in adult literacy. After 1992, more highly trained ESL teachers who took voluntary redundancy package from the Victorian Department of School Education entered the field. After 1990, in response to structural change and unemployment, the policy emphasis was on competency based learning, shorter courses, and labour market programs. This rapidly changed both provision and pedagogy. It also changed the nature of teachers' work in the field. First, with the introduction of competitive tendering for labour market programs; second with the changed clientele in community centres particular e.g
youth; and finally in the changed curriculum with the introduction of competency based curriculum. Competitive tendering meant that commnity based centres, often supported by local councils, offered labout market programs. Over time these becamme thriving community education centres, and councils invested in improving the educational facilities. Then with tenders, often up to 75% of programs were lost. Staff, highly trained ESL teachers with years of experience and commitment to adult education, were disrupted as they had to follow the money to new locations- either TAFE or private providers, often nearby- or lose their jobs. Many were single parents or family breadwinner with dependent children. Some, unable to shift jobs easily due to family commitments, left teaching; others found themselves employed in more crowded and less well resourced facilities. Working in numerous casual jobs in various locations and 'flexible' time arrangements make child care difficult if not impossible .
Together the funding model of tendering and the competitive open training market produced what one described as a 'shifting training shanty town', moving from one site to another to get the cheapest bidder, with students and staff following. The effect on individual women is significant.
In TAFE more generally, there has been an increase in contract and sessional staff, for both males and females. In March 1995, women constituted 25% of permanent teachers, 20% executive service; 60% of contract teaching staff and 56% of sessional teaching staff , while making up only 43% of teaching and executive staff. In PACCT ( administrative and clerical), women make up 67% of all PACCT and other staff. Of these, women are 67% of permanent and 75% of contract PACCT staff. Within OTFE, while women constitute 48% of total staff, they are still located in middle levels of VPS and EO (STB 1995).
In the open training market, TAFE are likewise being forced to compete with private tenderers for programs. At the same time, they are unable to use recurrent funding on adult literacy and ESL programs, making planning difficult. So while pathways are being developed to improve access and equity for students, with full-time accredited courses rather than ad hoc curriculum, and as such programs are becoming, at least financially, more central to the operations of TAFE, there is little concern about the professional standing of teachers eg. professional development or 'family friendly ' employment conditions eg. child care ( Brannen and Moss, 1990; Nader 1995). Indeed, the parallel 'rationalisation' of council services and reduction of expenditure on local infrastructure such as kindergartens and public transport further reduces the options of women and makes the logistics of balancing home and professional life doubly difficult ( Fincher, 1991; Blackmore et al 1994).
As in the school and university sector, the restructuring of the educational labour market is in a context of intensification of academic labour with increased performance management mechanisms ( e.g. appraisal, quality assurance, accountability); the packaging of curriculum to make it more portable and teacher proof, and the standardising of assessnment(Sanguinetti 1995; Blackmore et al 1995).
Local/global The above examples indicate how, within the current discursive frames of restructuring centred around flexibility, competition, productivity, market forces and devolution, when considered from a feminist perpective, produces a relatively pessimistic scenario of educational work in a postmodern world. What is emerging in the newly devolved systems of educational governance both within sectors, across sectors
in Australia and in other Western liberal democacies such as Sweden ( Blackmore, 1993), Norway ( Moller, 1993) New Zealand ( Gordon, 1994 a and b ; Lauder et al 1994, Smylie 1994), Israel ( Chen 1993) and the UK (Whitty 1994; Nicholls and Ozga 1994; ATL 1995) is a consistent pattern of feminisation, casualisation and deprofessionalisation of educational work ( Jensen, 1988; Pillinger, 1993). At the same time, there are historically contingent differences cross culturally ( e.g. industrial relatons systems, geography, cultural factors, population patterns, participation rates of males and females etc) which produce often contradictory effects with regard to restructuring. Gillian Whitehouses work indicates, for example, that the centralised industrial relations system of Sweden and Australia, while both having more gender segmented labour markets that the USA and the UK, have less of a gender wage gap. She argues that the more centralised industrial systems have smaller gender wage gaps. But overall, the global characteristics of restructuring ( individual contracts, devolved governance and performance management, marketisation and privatisation of the public sector) produce common crosscultural patterns.
There are various theories about why this re-gendering core-periphery model is emerging in certain countries and not others. Aglietta's notion of neo-Fordism sees flexibility gained through the 'centralisation of planning of production and decentralisation of processes to units of production' , but sees intensification as leading to processes of deskilling and intensification of labour not re-skilling. ( Agletta 1987 pp. 118-9) He revisits the reserve army of labour thesis strongly debated amongst feminist neo Marxist and economists which works from the premise that women's work position is determined by the nuclear family in which women are supplementary wage earners and major consumers( Beasley 1995). Piore and Sabel reflect little upon the gender aspects of flexible specialisation. They see firms must be flexible in that they should not be committed to particular niche markets, and also must be able to shed marginal labour. Hence the use of workshop factories in which the core company contracts out to other firms, or the core centre of an organisation outsources to consultants. The essential themes are competition, co-operation, prices, wages and training. Certainly there are specific exploitative aspects of this-- the core usually comprises of middle , white middle aged men. But such analyses ignore both cultural and historical factors which regulate economic processes eg. labour market legislation, attitudes towards and access of women to childcare, which is the precondition for women's 'flexibility'. What life history studies of women, particularly those with a major responsibility for children, indicate is that women are highly flexible throughout their work histories- working in a wdier range of volunteer and part time employment than men. Recognition of the principles of permanent part time and job sharing as well as extension of family leave to fathers considerably improved women's working conditions. What the above studies show is that flexibility favours the employer ( in the above instances DEET or the Department of School Education) in tha they set the terms and conditions of employment with reduced bargaining capacity for women employees as even minimal safety net regulations are work away.
Where to from here?
The combination of downsizing, outsourcing, downstreaming and mainstreaming has meant that the equity agendas ,which had traditionally been run by a strong interventionist state from the centre, are now being devolved down the line through corporate management processes ( Burton, 1990). The issue therefore for those concerned with gender equity is how in this system of self governance
of individuals and institutions will gender equity be maintained and extended? What are the strategies that will work in such a context in which equity is seen to be a luxury and in which some individuals who have a high level of investment in the status quo are expected to address equity issues.
As Hinton and Castleman (1995) suggest, this in part lies in how affirmative action is structured and its relationship with the rest of the organisation. Case studies from public and private organisations, suggest that delegation and accountability structures are critical . A key element is the extent of central management (as opposed to devolved management) of affirmative action programs. This is line with our research on EO policy in schools which requires both top down and bottom up imperatives (Kenway et al 1994).
Another is to call upon other privileged discourses at particular times. Carmen Luke (1995) has indicated how quality assurance has indeed provided the scope for the recognition of valued work and more transparent decisionmaking within her university. There is an emerging discourse about Managing Diversity being produced within management education and in TAFE as a result of the Karpin Report, which may produce benefits for women, or at least those women who are in positions of relative power ( relative to most women but not most men in specific localities) (Shaftin 1995). But as I have argued, the capacity to enact upon such discourses is reduced within the period of economic constraint.
And yet another is to directly attack what Joan Eveline(1993) calls the 'politics of privilege', an the ways in which institutions work to favour those already in privileged positions, largely men in universities, through the processes of restructuring ie a form of subtle resistance and backlash (Blackmore 1992, forthcoming); that is, to challenge the close identification between particular models of masculinity, authority and 'hard' knowledge which have re-emerged in the guise of the corporate manager. Eleanor Ramsey refers to the need to name how this privilege is constituted, and its effects, and to make men responsible for their actions. (Ramsay 1995)
This ties in closely with Yeatman's discussion about the institutional economies of quality assurance within the new contractualism of organisational life. She sees a useful strategy is to use accountability ( the centrepiece of this contractualism) to work for women and thus exploit the accountability demands of line management for ensuring implementation and outcomes. Another strategy is to build equity into all contractual arrangements between individual line managers, and individual institutions eg. between OTFE and the TAFE College Boards, or between DEET and private providers. That is, in an era of self governance, there should be an expectation that individuals, particularly those in positions of power, take on responsibility about equity issues in an informed way. This can be done through consent(professional development) or coercion(performance contracts).
Each of these I see as short term tactics to a fastly moving agenda. A longer term strategy would be to undertake a feminist critique of the underlying assumptions of the what constitutes the key concepts of restructuring in ways which bring together theory and concrete local examples. Restructuring policies have largely been informed by normative and abstract theoretical paradigms derived in a large part from economics, a field which feminists have only recently begun to deconstruct.1As Chris Beasley states in her book Sexual Economyths ( p, 35): 'Market labour can only be a metaphor for labour within sex
relations, and even then probably only applicable to some aspects and type of this labour'. She suggests that even while feminist economists have sought to have women's domestic and unpaid labour recognised as 'productive' labour, it is still within the conventional economic frame which focuses upon paid labour in the public sphere( liberal version of the market or exchange relations of Marxist theory)ie there are few attempts to consider the voluntary and private labour that men do, which has been the starting point of legitimising women's work and worth.
What might a feminist economics look like which addresses issues outside the frame of conventional economics. While feminist economics comes from a range of theoretical perspectives - liberal, Marxist, institutional to name a few- points of agreement would include the need to deconstruct key concepts in neoclassical economics such as (i) the theory of scarcity . This assume that only certain material and natural resources are scarce at particular times. Orthodox economics only gives value according to the market. That is, a good is valued only according to what it gets in the marketplace. Thus, while love and caring are not scarce, they also are given no value. (ii) theories of choice which assume that individuals have same capacity resources and knowledge to make rational choices in order to maximise their personal and household benefits. Such theories ignore differential power relations and resources, interdependency between individuals, those with no market power (e.g. child or aged, sick) and that there is no necessarily unity of interests within the household. (iii) how the 'science' of economics is premised upon the Cartesian divide between science, reason, hard, masculine in the public domain and nature, emotion, soft, female in the private personal domain. That which is private is not dealt with by economics (e.g Strober, 1995), or if it is, as in the new home economics, dealt with continuing to privilege male altruism.
Economics as a science embodies man, and to look to an alternative, non scientific economics and to consider community, the body and emotion, is to put the prestige and status of economics in jeopardy. Economics has become a science about modelling human behaviour mathematically, at a distance, in abstraction. It has been this oversimplification of life that has been the major appeal to policy makers seeking political solutions. Nelson suggest that if economics actually took into account experience and indeed undertook research to test their theories, it would lead to an overturning of such central concepts.
Another interrelated trajectory is to consider the changing global and local role of the nation-state in this analysis and the notion of citizenship. Anna Yeatman suggests that modern social movements, amongst them feminism, made claims upon the paternalistic state. She now asks what happens to such claims when the
internationalisation of global finance, production and labour markets are working to erode the self-determining properties of the nation-state? It is arguable that these processes are changing the sphere of reference for the state as a unit of political management. it is now less a unit of governance with respect to the self-determining citizen community and more a unit of political management with respect to hoe it internal subjects and their economic activities articulate with transnational markets and institutions ( Yeatman, 1992, p. 449).
She argues that the unit of labour market analysis has been that of the nation state, and the national-societal approach has produced public policy on gender equity, equal opportunity, equal pay claims and anti discrimination. Modern citizenship has been premised upon a national
society which is self determining. What is clear in Europe is the extent to which in the emergence of the European Community, is how nations are no longer self determining, of the multiple definitions arising from the blurring of national geographical boundaries as economic boundaries have collapsed, and of the worrisome tendencies with regard to the failure of the EC to agree upon basis productive and reproductive rights for women (Price, 1994). The globalisation of national public policy has not maintained the gains of particular nation states for women e.g. Scandinavia. These challenges are also from within as well as without, with indigenous and previously marginalised groups making claim for inclusive notions of citizenship e.g. Maoris in New Zealand, Aboriginal Reconciliation in Australia etc. Yeatman (1992) argues that the nation state continues to be relevant but its focus is shifting from the national to the subnational ( local and devolved governance) and supranational ( transnational systems of governance) levels. At the same time, the networks are occurring between core centres cross nationally ( e.g. New York, Tokyo, Sydney) are more alike than geographically bounded sites e.g. Sydney and Adelaide. The concentration of the dynamics of investment in the core centres undermines the equity principle of the nation state with the withdrawal of services from the margins (rural areas or casual workers). Likewise the industrial relations system is premised upon national entity of the labour market. As I have argued, already the erosion of worker's conditions of a minimalist if not 'unprotected' position is evident with enterprise bargaining and individual employment contracts (Hammond and Hardbridge, 1993).
She also suggests that the degree to which the corporatist state, both conservative and social democratic, have in privatising much of the business of state policy making withdrawn it from open debate and accountability. I have also suggested that the corporatist state of the 1980s indeed silenced oppositional discourses of teacher unions through a hegemony of consent rather than coercion ( Blackmore, 1991) but which, as Peter Watkins (1993) suggests, opened the way for more coercive roles of the state as in Vic and WA in industrial and labour relations done with greater speed and force eg. silencing teachers' and community opposition through legislative, and ultimately policing, strategies. Yeatman(1992) suggests that with the polarisation of the labour market into core-periphery, there will be some women ( who generally marry men of equal income earning capacities) to have access to the global labour market citizenship, compared to those who are locked into a regional. local environments with restructured collective consumption and declining infrastructure ( eg, child care).
How then will gender equity, framed by national legislative requirements, be protected and extended? Yeatman suggests that now the appeal should be to the global notions of citizenship e.g, United Nations and ILO statements with regard to gender equity and not national legislative norms. Likewise, intra state agreements with regard to trade can include principles of pay equity and parity. At the same time, it is these very same intranational agreements which are re-positioning and encouraging particular modes of restructuring e.g. devolution ( Blackmore, 1993). At the level of the local, there are needs to re-form links with newly constituted action by women. e.g. local business expansion is largely due to women, and there can be local associations which place as central issues of pay equity. But as Yeatman suggests, it is women on the margins and excluded from previous notions of citizenship e.g. Aboriginal and Maori women, who have the least to lose with the changing nature of the state and public policy.
The welfare state of post war labour/capital settlement called upon a basic tenet of citizenship education as a public good. The postmodern
state of the 1990s increasingly sees education as an individual investment. It is ironic that the homogenising discourses of nationalism and the security derived from that discursive construction of national unity are re-surfacing at the very moment that the capacity of the state to produce material security, a basic condition of active citizenship, is declining.
REFERENCES
'Academic Work' (1992), Special Issue, Australian Universities Review 35(2) Australia Reconstructed (1987) Allen, F. (1990)Academic Women in Australian Universities ( Canberra) .
Allen, F.. (1990) Indicators of Academic Excellence : is there a link between merit and reward? Australian Journal of Education 34(1) Allen's. (1994) Review Article restructuring the World? Work, Employment and Society 8(1) pp. 113-26; Allport, C. (1995) Equity is all very well if you can afford it. NTEU Frontline. 3.1: 3-4 Australian Universities Review 1993. Marketing Education : Special Feature. 26. 2. Anderson, D. (1995) Private Training Provision in Australia : an overview of recent research. in F. Ferrier and C. Selby Smith (eds) The Economics of Education and Training 1995. Monash University /ACER Angwin, J. (1992) The Changing Workplace : the effect of change on Teachers' Work in Adult Language and Literacy Programs Critical Forum 3 (Dec) Angwin, J. (forthcoming) Curriculum Change in a time of Economic Rationalism, Prospect: The Journal of Adult Migrant Education Program.. Anyon, J (1994) The retreat of Marxism and socialist feminism : postmodern and poststructuralist theories in education Curriculum Inquiry 24, 2 pp. 114-34 Bacchi, C. (1993) The Brick Wall : why so few women become senior academics Australia Universities Review 36 (1) Bagguley, P., Lawson, J., Shpiro, P. , Urry J. Walby, S. and Warde, A. (1990) Restructuring: place, class and gender. Sage, London. Barlow, K. (1989) The White Paper and Restructuring: the academic labour market in S. Job, M. Hartwig and R. Sharp (eds) Crossroads : Higher Education and the Left Today Sydney Beasley, C. (1995) Sexual Economyths : Conceiving of a Feminist Economics Allen and Unwin, Sydney Blackmore, J. (1994a) Leadership in Crisis : feminist perspectives. Paper presented to the AERA, New Orleans. Blackmore , J. (1994b). Out on the Margins: the impact of educational restructuring upon the work of women educators. Paper presented to the Australian Sociological Association Conference. Geelong. Deakin University. Blackmore, J. (1992) 'More Power to the Powerful': mergers, corporate management and their implications for women in the reshaping of higher education, Australian Feminist Studies 15 Autumn pp.65-98 Blackmore, J.(1992) 'The gendering of skill in twentieth century Australian education' Journal of Educational Policy 7,4 pp. 351-77 Blackmore, J.(1991) 'Curriculum , Assessment and Certification: Contested Issues in Educational Reform in Victoria, 1930-60, in D. Stockley (ed) Melbourne Studies in Education 1990-1991 , Latrobe University Press, Bundoora. pp.45-78 Blackmore, J. and Kenway, J. (1988) Rationalisation, Instrumentalism and Corporate managerialism: the implication for women of the Green Paper Australian Universities Review 31(1) Blackmore, J. (1986) Learning to Work: The Vocationalisation of
Victorian Secondary Education 1900-80 Unpublished Ph D. Stanford Uni. Bowe, R. and Ball, S. (1992) Changing Policies, Changing Schools.(Routledge). Brannen, J. and Moss, O. (1990) Managing mothers: dual earner households after maternity leave London, Unwin Hyman Briskin, L and McDermott, L. (1993) Women -Challenging Unions. University of Toronto Press, Toronto. Brown, M. and Rushbrook, P. (1995) Bringing in the Operative : Case studies in Workbased training and micro-economic reform in F. Ferrier and C. Selby-Smith(eds) The Economics of Education and Training 1995 Centre for Economics and Education and Training, Monash University. Burton, C. (1990) The Promise and the Price : the struggle for Equal Opportunity in Women's Employment Allen and Unwin, Sydney Caruso, C. 1995 Women and Enterprise Bargaining NTEU Frontline. 3.1: 13-15 Carnegie, J. (1992) Creating a New Labour Market : implications of CBT and RPL for Women's Work Network for Women in Further Education Newsletter Dec Castleman, T. Allen , M., Bastalich., and Wright, P. 1995. Limited Access: Women's disadvantage in higher education employment. Melbourne: National Tertiary Education Union Cockburn, C. (1983) Brothers Pluto Press Cockburn, C. (1991) In the Way of Women: men's resistance to sexual equality in organisations McMillan,London. Collins, C. (1993) Competencies Australian College of Education Come in Cinderella' : a report of the Senate Standing Committee on Employment, Education And Training (Nov 1991) p. 172 Currie, J. 1994 Award Restructuring for Academics: the negotiating process Discourse. 15.2 : 22-33. Davidson, D.and Gribble, H. (1991) Invisible Owners: Women in Australian Adult Education Davis, E. and Pratt, V. (1993) Making the Link. Affirmative Action and Industrial Relations (Canberra). DEET(1991)Women and TAFE: a national plan of action AGPS, Canberra DEET (1991) Australia's Language : the Australian Language and Literacy Policy DEET (1988) Higher Education : a Report Canberra Elgqvist-Saltzman, I. (1988) Educational Reforms - women's life patterns A Swedish Case Study Higher Education 17. Elgqvist-Saltzman, I. (1992) Gravel in the machinery or the hub of the wheel : women workers in a time of educational reform in Sweden in M. Eduards et al Rethinking Change : current Swedish feminist research Univ. of Uppsala; Eveline, J. (1992) The Politics of Advantage INKWEL 92(1) Ferber , M.and . Nelson, J. (1993) Beyond Economic Man. Feminist Theory and Economics Chicago Fincher, R. (1989) Class and Gender relations in the local labour market and the local state in J. Wolch and M. Dear (eds) The Power of Geography Unwin and Hyman, London. Fine, M. et al(1993) Survey of the Working Conditions of Casual Academic Employees at the University of New South Wales. Social Policy Research Centre Gale, L 1995. Devolution: Issues for Women. NTEU Frontline. 3.1 : 3-5 Gilbert , R. (1992) Text and Context in Qualitative Research: discourse analysis and the problem of contextual explanation. Linguistics and Education 4. Glover, J. (1994) Women teachers and white collar workers: domestic circumstances and paid work. Work , Employment and Society 8, 1, pp. 87-100 Gordon, L. (1994 a) Whatever happened to the National Policy for Girls and Women in New Zealand? Women Studies Journal 2. Gordon. L. (1994b) Rich and poor schools in Aotearoa New Zealand
Journal of Educational Studies 29, 2, Green, S. 1994 Women Losing out on Enterprise Agreements. The Age 18 May, p. 2. Green, Andy (1994) Postmodernism and state education, Journal of Education Policy 9, 1 pp. 67-83. Gribble, H. (1991) Come in Cinderella ?Network of Women in Further Education Newsletter, Dec Gribble, H. (1993) : Claiming Common Ground in Education Links 44 Grimes,S. (1991) Casual Careers of Career Casualties : equal employment opportunity an d women's employment in universities, Monograph. Industrial relations Research Centre. University of New South Wales Hammond, S. and Hardbridge, R. (1993) The impact of the Employment Contracts Act on women at work', New Zealand Journal of Industrial Relations. 18, 1pp. 15-30. Hargreaves, A. (1994) Restructuring restructuring : postmodernity and the prospects of education change. Journalofo Education Policy. 9(1) pp. 47-65 Hennessey, R. 1993.Materialist Feminism and the Politics of Discourse. London: Routledge. Hinton, S. and Castleman, T. (1995) Managing Best Practice in Affirmative Acrion and equal Employment. Beyond Good Intentions: the effect of organisational structures affirmative action and equal opportunity implementation. Paper presented to the Fifth Women and Labour Conference. University of Macquarie, Sydney. September Hyman, P. (1994) Women and Economics : A New Zealand Feminist Perspective. Bridget Williams Books, Wellington. Jackson, N. (1991) Skills Formation and Gender Relations : the politics of who knows what Deakin University Press Jenson, J. (et al) (ed) (1988) Feminisation of the Labour Force (Polity). Johnson, L (1991) Theorising the Global Pillage in E. Jacka(ed) Continental Shift : globalisation and culture. Local Consumption Productions Double Bay. Kell , P. (1994) A study of Reforms in NSW TAFE Ph D. Deakin University Kelly, C and Davidson, J. (1995) Wages and Conditions of Women and Men under Part VIB Agreements Paper presented to the Fifth Women and Labour Conference. University of Macquarie, Sydney. September Kenway, Jane, Chris Bigum and Lindsay Fitzclarence (1993) Marketing education in the post-modern age, Journal of Education Policy, vol. 8, no. 2, pp. 105-122. Kenway, J, Willis, S, Blackmore, J and Rennie, L.(1994) Making 'Hope Practical' Rather than 'Despair Convincing': feminist post-structuralism, gender reform and educational change. British Journal of Sociology of Education 15, 2, pp. 187-210 Kenway, J. and Blackmore, J/ (1988) Gender and the Green Paper : privatisation and equity Australian Universities Review 31(1) Lash. S. and Urry, J. (1994) The Economies of Time and Space Polity Press Lauder, H. et al (1994) The Creation of Market Competition for Education in New Zealand. Smithfield Project. Leavold , S.(Forthcoming) Language at Work : issues of gender and culture in workplace based education courses Critical Forum Lever-Tracy, C. 1988. The flexibility debate : part time work Labour and Industry. 1. 2, pp 210-41 Luke, C. Quality Assurance and Women in Higher Education Paper presented to the Fifth Women and Labour Conference. University of Macquarie, Sydney. September Luke. A. (1992) Literacy and work in 'New Times' Open Letter 3(1) pp. 3-15 Mayer Report
McCormack, R. and Pancine, G. (1990) Learning to Learn: introducing adults to the culture context and conventions of Knowledge. A Guide to teachers. (Division of Further Education, Melbourne) National Plan of Action for Women in TAFE July 1994 Draft Moller, J. (1993) Restructuring in the Norwegian context: a combination of efforts towards dectntralisation and centralisation. Paper presented to OISE Nader, T. (1995) The Natioanl Action Plan for Women in TAFE at the South Burnett College of TAFE : A case study. M. Ed. Research Paper, Faculty of Education, Deakin University. Nelson, J. (1993) The study of choice or the study of provisioning? Gender and the definition of economics. M. Ferber and J. Nelson (eds) Beyond economic Man: feminist theory and economics . University of Chicago Press, Chicago. Nicholls, P and Ozga, J. (1994) Manufacturing Consent in Primary Schools Paper prsented to AARe, Newcastle NBEET. A Fair Chance for All ( Draft 1989) NTB (1991) National Competency Standards Policy and Guidelines Out of the margins : Proceedings from :the First International Conference on feminist economics Amsterdam 1993) Pillinger, J. (1993) Feminising the Market; Basingstoke, MacMillan Piore, M. J. and Sabel, C.F. (1984) The Second Industrial Divide: Possibilites for Prosperity, BAsic Books, New York Pixley, J. (1993) Citizenship and Employment: Investigating Post-Industrial Options Cambridge University, Cambridge. Pocock, B. (1987) Changing Systems: Women,Work and TAFE, Canberra Pocock, B. (1988) Demanding Skill: Women and Technical Education in Australia Allen and Unwin, Sydney Poiner, G. and Wills, S (1990) The Gifthorse Allen and Unwin, Sydney. Pollert, A. (ed) (1991) Farewell to Flexibility? Oxford, Basil Blackwell Poynton, C. (1993) Naming women's workplace skills : linguistics and power in B. Probert and B. Wilson (eds) Pink Collar Blues: work gender and technology , Melbourne, Melbourne Uni Press. Pratt, V. (1989) Affirmative Restructuring, Workplace Change, 3, Canberra. Price, L (1994) Women in Europe Work, Employment and Society 8, 2,pp. 297-300 Taylor, S. and Henry, M. (1994) Equity and the new post compulsory education and training policies in Australia.: a progressive or regressive agenda? Journal of Education Policy , 2, 105-27 Probert, B. (1993) Reconceptualising Restructuring : the Australian Workplace in the Changing Global economy. Latrobe Uni. Ramsay, E. 1995. The Politics of Privilege and Resistance, Keynote to Women Culture and Universties : a Chilly Climate? Conference. Sydney: University of Technology Sydney. Rushbrook. P (1995) Straws in the Wind : The construction of Technical and Further Education in Victoria Pd./D. Unpublished, Monash University Sanguinetti, J. (1994) Negotiating Competence: the impact on teaching practice of the CGEA. Adult Literacy Research Network, National Languages and Literacy Institute of Australia. Sawer,M. (1988) Life After Block : EEO in the Public Service Canberra Bulletin of Public Administration 55 Seddon, T. (1993) Beyond Context. Falmer Press Watkins, P. (1993) Faxing the Crisis Down the Line in Smyth, J.(ed)A Socially Critical View of the Self-Managing School (Falmer Press, Sussex) Smyth,J. (1994) A policy analysis of higher education reforms in Australia in the context of globalisation Melbourne Studies in Education 1994, Latrobe University Press, Melbourne
Special Issue(1993) The Training Reform Agenda, Education Links, Summer. State Training Board, Women's Participation in TAFE: a statistical analysis. STB Stephen, D. (1995) Women's relative earings under enterprise bargaining Paper presented to the Fifth Women and Labour Conference. University of Macquarie, Sydney. September Strober, M. (1995) Feminist economics : Whats It all About? Downing Oration, Melbourne University, Sept 12. Sutherland, M. (1988) Women in Higher Education : effects of crisis and change Higher Education 17 Victoria Auditor General's Office (1995) Equality in the Workplace. Women in management. Melbourne: Government Printer. Walker, J. (1989) The production of exchange values and employment in the home Australian Feminist Studies 9 Autumn. Waring, Stephen (1990) Taylorism Transformed: scientific management theory since 1945, University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill Weiner, G. (1992)Equitable Staffing Policies in Further and Higher Education (European Commission Report). Whitehouse, G. (1990) Unequal Pay : a comparative study of Australia, Canada, Sweden and the UK. Labour and Industry 3, 2/3 pp. 354-71. Whitehouse, G. (1995) Casual or Permanent Part-Time / Women, enterprise bargaining, and service sector employment. Paper presented to the Fifth Women and Labour Conference. University of Macquarie, Sydney. September
Whitty, Geoff (1994) Devolution in Education Systems: Implications for Teacher Professional Development and Pupil Performance. Paper presented at Decentralisation and Teachers, Melbourne. Wieneke, C. and Durham, M.(1992) Regulating the equality agenda, EEO in higher education Australian Universities Review , 35. Williams, C. (1992) 'The Glass Escalator' : Hidden advantages for men in the 'female'professions. Social Problems. 39 (3) pp. 253-653 Women and Work (1993) Facts and Figures Women's Bureau May Yeatman, A. (1990) Bureaucrats, Technocrats and Femocrats (Allen & Unwin) Yeatman, A. (1992) Women's Citizenship Claims, Labour Market Policy and Globalisation , Australian Journal of Political Science 27,pp. 449-61 Yeatman, A (1995) The new Contractualism andthe politics of quality management Women, Culture and Universities . A Chilly Climate? Conference Proceedings, UTS.
1Contemporary Marxists concretise this process, and periodise these into • 19thc 'liberal' capitalism' where the circuits of capital occurred in a locality or region with little overlap. • 20thc 'organised' capitalism in which consumer commodities and labour power flow on a national scale and we see the growth of large bureaucractic firm, national unions and public sector activity. • late 20th century disorganised capitalism: fragmented and flexible capitalism in an era of deregulation. Now international with increased in global trade and foreign invetment, global movements of finance. Foreign trade increased 7% in OECD countries but manufacturing based trade only increased 3%/ann. Money capital rose 300% to far greater value than manufacturing. 2 This paper arises out of numerous grants: Small ARC (1993) Women and Leadership and Large ARC Women, Educational Restructuring and Leadership (1995-7) ( with J. Sachs); and Small ARC (1994) Educational Outworkers: Women educators and educational restrcuturing in the ALBE and tertiary sector ( with Jenny Angwin and Sally Leavold). 1The inaugural Feminist Economics Conference was held in Amsterdam, June 1993. One product has been the book Out of the Margins, another
has been the development of a feminist economics network and a third a substantive body of literature.