Miss Congeniality Meets the New Managerialism: Feminism, Contingent Labour, and the New University

In Canada, non-permanent faculty are no longer simply a reserve, flexible labour pool available for administrators to draw on when needed (e.g. during times of fl uctuating enrollments); rather, they represent a strategy utilized by universities to reduce overall labour costs. In this article I bring together Women’s Studies, feminism, contingent academics, and new managerialism. I explore how Women’s Studies, as a site for thwarting ruling relations and offering the promise of alternative pedagogies, is being undercut by its forced reliance on contingent labour. Second, I argue that the new managerialist culture undermines the role of feminism in the contemporary academy such that faculty members’ feminism complicates their tenuous positions as non-permanent faculty members.