"Regardless of age" : Australian university managers' attitudes and practices towards older academics
- Authors: Earl, Catherine , Taylor, Philip , Cannizzo, Fabian
- Date: 2018
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Work, Aging and Retirement Vol. 4, no. 3 (2018), p. 300-313
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- Description: As with other industrialized nations Australia's population is aging and older workers are encouraged to work for longer. At the same time, Australia's university sector, which is aging, is being reconfigured through changes that potentially marginalize its older workers as higher education institutions try to become more competitive in a global market. In this context, youthfulness appears to embody competitiveness and academic institutions are increasingly aspiring to a young workforce profile. This qualitative article builds on previous research to explore to what extent ageist assumptions shape attitudes to older workers and human resource management (HRM) practices within Australian universities even when HRM practitioners are well versed in antidiscrimination legislation that (unlike the Age Discrimination in Employment Act in the United States) applies to workers of all ages. Semistructured interviews conducted with 22 HRM practitioners in Australian universities reveal that university HRM practices generally overlook the value of retaining an older workforce by conflating "potential" with "youthfulness," assuming that staff potential and performance share a negative correlation with age. While mostly lower-ranked institutions have attempted to retain older academics to maintain an adequate labor supply, this study finds that university policies targeting the ongoing utilization of older workers generally are underdeveloped. Consequently, the availability of late career employment arrangements is dependent upon institutions' strategic goals, with favorable ad hoc solutions offered to academics with outstanding performance records, while a rhetoric of performance decline threatens to marginalize older academic researchers and teachers more generally.
A Home of Many Rooms: Celebrating the Australian Vietnamese Women's Welfare Association, 1983-2008
- Authors: Earl, Catherine
- Date: 2008
- Type: Text , Book
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Academic transition: a new style of learning
- Authors: Stating, Rebecca , Earl, Catherine
- Date: 2015
- Type: Text , Book chapter
- Relation: Student Voices in Education Chapter 4 p.47-60
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Academic writing
- Authors: Earl, Catherine , Holm, Annette
- Date: 2015
- Type: Text , Book chapter
- Relation: Student Voices in Transition Chapter 6 p.76-90
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Adjusting to the University Culture: becoming an independent learner
- Authors: Earl, Catherine , Strating, Rebecca
- Date: 2015
- Type: Text , Book chapter
- Relation: Student Voices in Transition Chapter 3 p. 33-46
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Adjustment
- Authors: Earl, Catherine
- Date: 2012
- Type: Text , Book chapter
- Relation: Student voices in transition: The experiences of pathways students p.
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After work? Understanding older women’s portfolio life transitions
- Authors: Taylor, Philip , Earl, Catherine , Brooke, Elizabeth , McLoughlin, Christopher
- Date: 2021
- Type: Text , Book chapter
- Relation: Retiring women : work and post work transitions Chapter 7 p. 111-119
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- Description: Chapter 7 reports qualitative interviews with older women about the pursuit of an active, fulfilling and productive retirement, and the mechanisms that promote these outcomes. Contrary to notions of the blended lifecycle, analysis reveals a stark division between paid work and retirement for many women at the same time as an ongoing commitment to socially valued and productive albeit unpaid activities that form a portfolio career. Furthermore , analysis reveals an increased sense of autonomy and control over decision making among retired women that contrasts with their experiences of paid employment.
Age management for the common good
- Authors: Taylor, Philip , Earl, Catherine
- Date: 2023
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Economic and Labour Relations Review Vol. 34, no. 1 (2023), p. 179-188
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- Description: In the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic and amid the present reconfiguring of corporate purpose, there is an opportunity to realign actions focused on prolonging working lives. We put forward a transformative agenda concerned with workforce ageing that aligns with contemporary expectations regarding sustainability, inequality, and emerging conceptualisations of management. In this article, the new concept of Common Good human resource management (HRM) is utilised as a potential means of encouraging business responses focused on grand challenges such as population ageing. We suggest how these principles might be applied to the issue of managing age in workplaces, to recast debate about issues of age and work, to be used as an advocacy tool encouraging employer engagement, while providing a framework that might direct organisational leadership. © The Author(s), 2023. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of UNSW Canberra.
Australian employer usage of the practice of offering reduced working hours to workers close to retirement : Extent and determinants
- Authors: Taylor, Philip , Earl, Catherine , McLoughlin, Christopher
- Date: 2016
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Australasian Journal on Ageing Vol. 35, no. 2 (2016), p. E13-E17
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- Description: Aim: This study aimed to determine factors associated with the implementation by employers of the practice of offering reduced working hours for workers nearing retirement. Methods: Data came from a survey of 2000 employers of more than 50 employees each (30% response rate). Results: A minority (33%) of employers offered reduced working hours to older workers nearing retirement. Factors associated with offering reduced working hours were: expecting workforce ageing to cause a loss of staff to retirement; being a large employer; being a public/not-for-profit sector employer; not experiencing difficulties recruiting labourers; having a larger proportion of workers aged over 50; experiencing national competition for labour; not experiencing difficulties recruiting machinery operators/drivers; not expecting workforce ageing to increase workplace injuries; and experiencing difficulties with the quality of candidates. Conclusion: A minority of employers were found to offer reduced working hours to those nearing retirement. Factors associated with their propensity to do so included industry sector, size of employer, concerns about labour supply and the effects of workforce ageing. © 2016 AJA Inc.
Bridging the grey divide : An international perspective on the ageing workforce and longer working lives
- Authors: Taylor, Philip , Earl, Catherine
- Date: 2016
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Australian Journal of Social Issues Vol. 51, no. 2 (2016), p. 119-125
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Conclusion: public policy leadership and change for women’s work and retirement
- Authors: Taylor, Philip , Earl, Catherine , Brooke, Elizabeth , McLoughlin, Christopher
- Date: 2021
- Type: Text , Book chapter
- Relation: Retiring women : work and post work transitions Chapter 10 p.147-151
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- Description: With current policy concerns about shortfalls of labour supply and effects on the social welfare system due to population ageing, there is a need to understand the factors that shape women's choices about if, when and how to retire. Recent trends indicating the increased workforce participation of women demand new policy responses to the end of careers and retirement transitions to sustain acceptable levels of participation and productivity. This book is innovative in that it will examine constellations of factors that disadvantage or advantage women's career and retirement trajectories against a backdrop of public policy efforts to extend working lives.
Cosmopolitan or cultural dissonance? Middle-class encounters with the other
- Authors: Earl, Catherine
- Date: 2008
- Type: Text , Conference paper
- Relation: 17th Biennial Conference of the Asian Studies Association of Australia (ASAA) p. 1-15
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Customizing women’s portfolio work and ‘retirement’ careers
- Authors: Taylor, Philip , Earl, Catherine , Brooke, Elizabeth , McLoughlin, Christopher
- Date: 2021
- Type: Text , Book chapter
- Relation: Retiring women : work and post work transitions Chapter 8 p. 122-134
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- Description: Chapter 8 reports qualitative interviews with older women, drawing from the concepts of biographical work-life balance and portfolio careers. It focuses on older women who were in part-time work but who self-identified as having made a transition to retirement. Many had longstanding careers and stable networks, accrued skills and financial resources, supported a well-endowed quality of portfolio lives, whereas those who experienced ‘unbalanced’ portfolio retirement were more likely to be lacking resources from their working lives. The analysis reinforces the notion that retirement should be viewed as a process and not an event and that it is impossible to tell a single story of women's post-work transitions.
Discriminatory practices of older workers in an ageing residential care workforce
- Authors: Earl, Catherine , Taylor, Philip
- Date: 2016
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: International Journal of Work Innovation Vol. 1, no. 4 (2016), p. 391-412
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- Description: Job opportunities for older workers in the residential care sector are strong so there appears to be little age discrimination against them in recruitment, but it has been recognised that in the workplace age- and gender-based stereotyping challenges the efficacy of age management and generates intergenerational issues. This article focuses on the ageing of the female-dominated workforce in an Australian residential care organisation. Firstly, it argues age-based discriminatory practices are not only directed towards older workers but may also affect younger workers. Secondly, it argues older workers are not only the victims of discrimination but may discriminate against both younger and older co-workers. In doing so, they may draw on perceptions of age, gender and other attributes, including skills, qualifications and status in the organisational hierarchy. The potential policy implications of this complexity of age prejudices in terms of labour shortages and inclusive management practices are briefly discussed.
Everyday discrimination in the Australian workplace : Assessing its prevalence and age and gender differences
- Authors: Taylor, Philip , McLoughlin, Christopher , Earl, Catherine
- Date: 2018
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Australasian Journal on Ageing Vol. 37, no. 4 (2018), p. 245-251
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- Description: Objective: This study aimed to increase understanding of the nature and prevalence of discriminatory experiences in the workplace, focusing on issues of age and gender. Methods: The concept of everyday discrimination was operationalised in a survey of a representative sample of Australian workers. Results: It was observed that overall, experiences of everyday discrimination were rare. Among men, such experiences declined with age, whereas for women almost no age differences were observed. Conclusion: It is argued that the nature of labour market age barriers has been misunderstood and the extent of discrimination faced by older workers possibly overstated.
Freedom to choose? Marriage and professional work among urban middle-class women in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam
- Authors: Earl, Catherine
- Date: 2018
- Type: Text , Book chapter
- Relation: Women of Asia: Globalization, Development, and Gender Equity Chapter 17 p. 236-247
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- Description: This chapter presents a theoretical framework derived from classic Bourdieusian sociology, modified with feminist, cultural, and globalization theories. The discussion draws on ethnographic fieldwork, comprising participant observation among urban middle-class women in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam from 2000 to 2015. The chapter considers the women's stories as the interconnected stories of sisters whose futures are entangled with their natal families as well as their (future) husband's families. Their stories illustrate the massive impact of globalization on women of Vietnam, and how this plays out differentially in processes of development and social change in urban middle-class women's lives. This occurs particularly in the context of choices about professional work and marriage in achieving desires for normative social status, as well as in meeting desires for upward social mobility and a secure future in post-reform Vietnam. The chapter draws on the interpretation in analyzing choice-making in urban middle-class Vietnamese women's lives. © 2019 Taylor & Francis.
Future-making tactics : exploring middle-class living and green practices in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam
- Authors: Earl, Catherine
- Date: 2020
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Ethnos Vol. 85, no. 3 (2020), p. 454-470
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- Description: Practices of environmental sustainability in Vietnam are not new, although these may align to managing austerity and rural living. In Ho Chi Minh City, tactics deployed by middle-class professionals shaping their futures involve conscious choices about transport, manual labour, consumption, and relations with the natural world for a more sustainable city. Such choices are constrained by frictions, such as lacking capital or rejecting globalised phenomena. Drawing on sensory anthropology and new mobilities, firstly, I argue that focusing on place-specific values may overlook pervasive influences of rurality and globalisation on relations that transform urban living unevenly and unequally. Secondly, I propose that it is not simply the ‘hard’ built environment that offers a resource in articulation and materialisation of transitions to more sustainable and liveable urban places. The discussion reveals that middle-class desires to experience comfortable living shape tactics that, while mitigating uncertainty or demonstrating resilience, are not simply individual choices. © 2019, © 2019 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.
Home
- Authors: Earl, Catherine
- Date: 2012
- Type: Text , Book chapter
- Relation: Student Voices in Transition: The Experiences of Pathways Students Chapter 8 p. 213-249
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Independent learning
- Authors: Earl, Catherine
- Date: 2012
- Type: Text , Book chapter , Electronic book section
- Full Text: false
- Description: "In Australia and South Africa, as in many other states, an important aspect of higher education policy entails initiatives to broaden participation among under-represented student groups. In response, universities have developed pathways to higher education that aim to attract, prepare and retain students from increasingly diverse backgrounds. In order to do this, it is important to develop an informed understanding of how these students experience university. Student voices in transition : the experiences of pathways students explores how previously under-represented students perceive university and learn to successfully adapt. Student voices in transition reports the voices of students who entered university through access pathways at Monash University in Australia and South Africa. It provides insight into why these students sought university qualifications, how they adjusted to university study, the challenges they faced and the rewards they experienced. It identifies the issues faced by commencing university students, particularly those who have past experiences of modest academic achievement, and what the transition to university actually involves, regardless of how it is reported by experts, lecturers or institutions."--Back cover.
Introduction: Older women and later life transitions in industrialized societies
- Authors: Taylor, Philip , Earl, Catherine , Brooke, Elizabeth , McLoughlin, Christopher
- Date: 2021
- Type: Text , Book chapter
- Relation: Retiring women : work and post work transitions p. 1-7
- Full Text: false
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- Description: With current policy concerns about shortfalls of labour supply and effects on the social welfare system due to population ageing, there is a need to understand the factors that shape women's choices about if, when and how to retire. Recent trends indicating the increased workforce participation of women demand new policy responses to the end of careers and retirement transitions to sustain acceptable levels of participation and productivity. This book is innovative in that it will examine constellations of factors that disadvantage or advantage women's career and retirement trajectories against a backdrop of public policy efforts to extend working lives.