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

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In recent decades there has been a perceptible rise in employment precarity across professions, industries, institutions and economies, including for managerial grades. In this article the authors contend that 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. The authors 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, the UK and USA in 2002–2006, 2015–2019 and 2020–2021) the article considers not only women managers’ experiences of work since the millennium, but also their occupational prospects for the future. The authors conclude that under neoliberalism the enduring interaction of organizational restructuring, precarious employment and work intensification will continue to affect 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 parenting and care responsibilities.