A fractional commitment? Part-time work and the maternal body

Abstract

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Acknowledgements I would like to thank Steve Fleetwood, all in the work–life balance study group and the two anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments on earlier drafts of this paper. Notes 1 Hopfl, examining Kristeva's work, argues that female academics are obliged to conceal their identity as 'mother' not only materially but also textually, In order to get published, a woman must obscure her maternity and her children. Her identity 'as mother…must be rejected, separated, thrown off…to…conform to the idea of male discourse a mother must render herself homologous with the male text' (Hopfl, Citation2000: 100). 2 Women in the study who worked less than full-time were employed on a 'fractional' basis – as a percentage of their former, whole-time position and with continued contract and pension rights. However, while 'fractional' is the academic term used to describe this form of part-time employment, it was not one with which participants were familiar. It should, therefore, be noted that in the direct quotes that follow, the term used by mothers when describing their fractional employment, was 'part-time'.