Gender and ICT organises a research seminar by Dr. Darren Thomas Baker, on-going visiting fellow at Cranfield University School of Management (UK) and Visiting Scholar at the Internet Interdisciplinary Institute (IN3) until next August. In the seminar, Baker will present the outcomes of his recent work on the lived experiences of women in accounting and finance under neoliberalism using a psycho-analytically informed perspective.

Darren Thomas Baker has identified two psychosocial dynamics at play for neoliberal women. Firstly, perseverance refers to the recognition by women that the workplace is stacked against them but one must push through any barriers one encounters to be successful. Secondly, those who fail to persevere and overcome the higher barriers put in their way only have themselves to blame, which renders individuals responsible for their lack of success. He explores how this is achieved through splitting: the negative experiences, which are saturated with anxiety and discomfort, are ignored or blamed on others who are unable to unfold their idealized individual agency to be successful. This article contributes to postfeminist debates on women and neoliberalism by integrating psycho-dynamics in the study of subjectivities under neoliberalism. Baker shows the psychic processes present in the formation of the neoliberal subject, which enable women to justify gender inequality in the workplace.

Date: Tuesday, 4th July 2017
Time: 11:00 h
Place: Room -1A, UOC Castelldefels building (Parc Mediterrani de la Tecnologia, B3 building), Av. Carl Friedrich Gauss, 5, 08860 Castelldefels (Barcelona)

The seminar, that will be held in English, will be broadcasted via live streaming.

Speaker

Darren Thomas Baker is a researcher interested in applying psychosocial principles to the study of gender relations, class and leadership. He draws on psychoanalytical theory for epistemological, methodological and ontological inspiration. His research focuses on Finance and Accounting as well as low-skilled service sector occupations, and includes: gender and diversity in organisations; leadership and ethics, including capacities for care and responsibility at work, and social mobility and precarity in organisations and wider society.

Baker holds a MA from the University of Oxford, where he conducted research on masculinities, and studied for his PhD at the School of Business and Management, King’s College London. He has recently completed a collaboratively funded research project by the ESRC and ACCA exploring the career trajectories of men and women in finance and accounting in the UK, and is currently preparing his next research project exploring issues regarding leadership and social mobility improvement of women and men in low-skilled work in the UK.

Free attendance by sending an e-mail to icarol@uoc.edu.