ABSTRACT
In the last decade, workplace restructuring, accountability, “new” managerialism, and “total quality management” have filtered through higher-education sectors globally. Such systems and process changes have been attributed to the global sweep of economic rationalism that has left few public and private industries untouched. Although much has been written and argued about the negative consequences for women of the new managerialism, quality assurance, and management initiatives, in this chapter I will describe some potentially positive outcomes for women. I situate the discussion in both national and local contexts and argue that the popular “repressive hypothesis” of power via governmentality masks the dialectical flip side of negative and coercive power, which Foucault (1979, 1983, 1989) characterized as “productive power.”
