Abrams, Ruth (2020) The postfeminist fantasy of female job seekers. (PhD thesis), Kingston University, .
Abstract
Job seeking in a contemporary UK labour market is complex and demanding. The distribution of middle-skilled labour is decreasing, as is access to social security such as welfare provision during prolonged periods of seeking work. Women in particular are at risk of displacement within current labour market conditions and are more likely to experience underemployment and feelings of underutilisation. Running parallel to this are cultural narratives that encourage work to be a source of heightened meaning, purpose and passion. This indicates a tension worth exploring in relation to how female job seekers navigate a UK labour market post higher education. Using unstructured interviews and narrative enquiry, a total of 38 interviews are analysed using the voice-centred relational method. Everyday job seeking practices and ideals are articulated through a logics approach including: the social logics of individual effort; the political logics of female success; and the fantasmatic logics of getting it right. Findings suggest that participants remain gripped by job seeking practices and ideals characteristic of a postfeminist ideology. They strive to become ideal (as determined by a postfeminist ideology), working women and prior to securing employment, job seeking itself becomes the work undertaken. This necessitates that they are entirely accountable and responsible for their job seeking and that their success depends on them undertaking extensive self-work and being unwaveringly confident, positive and proactive. However, participant accounts of guilt, self-doubt and anxiety associated with job seeking suggests that a postfeminist ideology relating to getting it ‘right’, female success and individual effort in this context needs to be challenged. By exploring the enactment of a postfeminist ideology in the context of job seeking, participants’ burdens are highlighted. This has implications for how the female job seeker is both conceptualised and supported. This thesis calls on policymakers and job seekers themselves to account for contextual factors such as labour market conditions and to critically engage with taken for granted postfeminist assumptions of what an ideal working woman is.
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