Gender Behind-the-Scenes: Women's Career Experiences in the Contemporary US Film and Television Industry

Since the 1980s the film and television industry in the United States has developed into a largely contract-based system characterised by career insecurity and precarity. Based upon 27 semi-structured in-depth interviews conducted in Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Chicago during the summer of 2013, I analysed women’s reported career experiences in the contemporary US film and television industry. Using Banks’ (2009) concept of feminist production studies, which integrates political economy, cultural studies, and gendered perspectives I focused on several key areas of women’s careers as reported by my participants for analysis. I divided my analysis into three parts based upon data gathered through the interviews. First I explore how and why my participants chose to enter work in an industry characterised by precarious employment and then why, despite this insecurity, they chose to continue working in this field. Next, I analyse women’s networking practices in film and television work, how they conceptualised these relationships, and argue that my participants’ networking practices are embodied, genuine, selective, and managed contradicting some elements of Wittel’s (2001) concept of ‘network sociality.’ I conclude with an examination of women’s reported experiences of sexism and discrimination in the contemporary industry and strategies my participants used to avoid such encounters. Research concerning labour in the cultural industries has become more prevalent since the 1990s. However, most of this work has been conducted in reference to cultural work/ers in the UK and Europe. This thesis illuminates the career experiences of women of varied ages who work in diverse occupations in the contemporary US film and television industry.