related publications

Carruthers Thomas, K. (2021) Mapping Career: A Methodology. Gender, Work and Organisation Annual Conference 2021. 30 June, online. Email for copy 
Carruthers Thomas, K. (2021) Organisational Mapping and Power Geometry in the University.  Gender, Work and Organisation Annual Conference 2021. 02 July, online.  Email for copy 
Carruthers Thomas, K. (2021) Gender and the University: Stories So Far and Spaces Between. In M.Murphy, C.Burke, C.Costa and R.Raaper (Eds). Social Theory and the Politics of Higher Education: Critical Perspectives on Institutional Research. p133-149. London: Bloomsbury Academic.
Carruthers Thomas, K., 2019. Gender as a Geography of Power. In G. Crimmins (Ed.) Strategies for Resisting Sexism in the Academy. London: Palgrave Macmillan. 

research questions 

The Gender(s) at Work project investigated the ways in which gender shapes everyday experiences of the university workplace and career trajectory over time.  ​How does gender operate as a ‘geography of power’ within HE?  How do participants’ diverse and complex lived experiences trouble the prevailing career narrative of a linear, upward trajectory? ​

research methods


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key themes

The research was conducted within one post-1992 UK university.  Participants self-identified as female, male and gender non-binary.  They occupied academic and professional services roles in five grade families across the organisational hierarchy.  Data collection (n=45 individual narrative interviews and a visual mapping task) took place between November 2016 and May 2017.   ​

1. ​​​‘career’ not as a normative linear, upward and uninterrupted trajectory but as a wider mapping of identity across personal and professional territories: ‘blocks, interruptions, stagnation and serendipity shape and complicate the career path’ (Carruthers Thomas 2019; p199).  Some ‘careers’ are more likely to stagnate than others. 
2. ways in which experiences of the university as a workplace and higher education as a sector are mediated by intersectionalities of gender, ethnicity, culture, age and sexual orientation. 
3. tensions between the university’s commitments to equality on paper, and attitudes and behaviours which sustain institutional and individual sexist practices. Clear space between a rhetoric of equality and lived experiences in the workplace/throughout working lives  

dissemination

Research findings were widely shared through conferences, seminars and publications. They also formed the basis of the gword tour.