Work-life interferences in the early academic career stages: The case of precarious researchers in Italy

This paper addresses the topic of work–life interferences in academic contexts. More specifically, it focuses on early career researchers in the Italian university system. The total availability required from those who work in the research sector is leading to significant transformations of the temporalities of work, especially among the new generation of researchers, whose condition is characterized by a higher degree of instability and uncertainty. Which are the experiences of the early career researchers in an academic context constituted by a growing competition for permanent positions and, as a consequence, by a greatly increased pressure? Which are the main gender differences? In what elements do Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics disciplines differ from Social Sciences and Humanities? The collected narratives reveal how the ongoing process of precarization is affecting both the everyday working activities and the private and family lives of early career researchers, with important consequences also on their future prospects

The Rise of a Latin Model? : family and fertility consequences of employment instability in Italy and Spain

This paper analyses how unstable employment influences becoming a mother in Italy and Spain. Results suggest that institutional factors foster dynamics of social inequality and hinder family formation. We show that in southern Europe (Italy and Spain), but not in other institutional contexts, the lack of employment stability produces a delay in fertility decision. We attribute this impact of the employment situation on demographic decisions to the sub-protective southern European welfare systems and the insider\u2013outsider labor market configuration, as enhanced by the partial and targeted labor market deregulations of recent decades. In the context of low levels of welfare, unstable employment often comes with persistently reduced entitlement to social and welfare rights, and, therefore, with notable social and demographic consequences. We provide support for this institutional argument by showing that fertility decisions are independent of employment stability in other contexts. Analyses are based on longitudinal data using event history analysis and simultaneous equation models

Precariousness and Gender Asymmetries Among Early Career Researchers: A Focus on STEM Fields in the Italian Academia

This article analyses how the growing instability and uncertainty in the Italian academic system intersect the mechanisms that reproduce gender disadvantages in scientific careers. More precisely, it focuses on how job instability influence career chances among male and female PhD holders at the very beginning of their career in STEM disciplines, paying attention to the mechanisms that foster the exclusion from the academic system. On the base of the results of the Doctorate Holders' Vocactional Integration survey, conducted by ISTAT in 2014, and of a qualitative organisational case study conducted in an Italian STEM department, working conditions and career strategies of male and female early stages researchers are explored adopting both an objective and a subjective perspective. The analyses point out that the current precarisation of scientific careers does not seem to scratch and/or undermine the organisational culture in the Italian universities, which relies on a traditional gender model