Organizational restructuring, precarious employment, and work intensification: Women managers’ experience of work under neoliberalism

In recent decades there has been a perceptible rise in employment precarity across professions, industries, institutions and economies, including for managerial grades. We contend this emanates from an implicit neoliberal governance agenda promoting deepening career uncertainty amidst transformative digital innovation and radical corporate restructuring. Among the effects of such changes have been managers experiencing longer working hours, greater work intensification, and worsening work-life balance. We argue such effects have been particularly acute for women and notably under the institutional (economic, political and social) constraints of the coronavirus pandemic. Presenting quasi-longitudinal information from three qualitative studies (based on data collected variously in Japan, UK and USA in 2002-2006, 2015-2019, and 2020-2021) we consider not only women managers’ experiences of work since the millennium, but also their occupational prospects for the future. We claim under neoliberalism the enduring interaction of organizational restructuring, precarious employment, and work intensification will continue to effect adversely the equilibrium between women managers’ personal lives and their professional work; given many confront increasing demands of corporate availability and work-related connectivity whilst simultaneously dealing with significant responsibilities for parenting and care.