ABSTRACT
This chapter will identify the dominant forces that are shaping university life in Australia and elsewhere, now and in the predictable future. Its main purpose, however, is to consider what they might mean for feminist work and workers in universities, and thus for the future of feminism in the academy. In the paper we will avoid the postmodernist feminist preoccupation with mini-narratives and talk of meta-narratives, dominant discourses and driving forces, conscious, though, of the problems of such accounts. Our plan is to bring together several bodies of literature that tend neither to speak with each other nor to discuss the contemporary university. In combination, these are helpful in understanding some driving forces for change and their implications for feminism within the academy. Overall, we hope to connect feminist discussions of the contemporary university to literatures which enhance their explanatory capacity and which raise issues for consideration which to this point have been somewhat overlooked.
