Making Do to Navigate Precarity: The Case of Early-Career Women Academics in Indonesia

This article argues that neoliberalism and patriarchy are interconnected in creating academic precarity for early-career women academics in Indonesia. It examines state-promoted higher-education policies that advance neoliberalisation through discourses of self-reliance, competitiveness, and entrepreneurship, with particular attention to self-reliance, which has emerged as the most significant aspect of early-career academics’ lives. Under patriarchy, women are often burdened with responsibilities for childcare and domestic chores. Drawing on Michel de Certeau’s concept of ‘making do’, this article analyses how Indonesian early-career women academics navigate academic precarity to construct their self-imagined careers. Our analysis of 13 interviewees shows that these scholars respond to academic precarity by engaging in side hustles and leveraging online work, taking steps to navigate precarious academic careers, and negotiating informal support systems to handle precarious personal relationships. Although the participants did not explicitly mention feminism, their everyday practices embody feminist values. The article thus concludes that ‘making do’ is an individual tactic, while collective academic practice is needed.