This article analyzes the connections between gender, labor, and mobility by tracing the transnational careers of two Australian women who began working at the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) in the 1930s and 1940s: Peggie Broadhead and Muriel Howlett. Both participated in the production of media content aimed at British diasporic audiences while at the same time negotiating their own Australian national identity and sense of belonging, within an imperial framework. A close study of institutional and private archives reveals that these professional responsibilities and tensions resulted in the formation of a new transnational identity of “Dominions broadcaster.” This article reveals the agency and adaptability of Australian women working in international broadcasting, and argues that through their labor and mobility they inscribed and made real the idea of imperial and Commonwealth networks.

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On the evening of 5 September 1975, 150 women occupied the offices of the Canberra Times, protesting about an editorial hostile to participants in a national conference on ‘Women and Politics’. This action, at the production site of the Australian capital’s only broadsheet newspaper, provides a context for this themed issue’s focus on gendered labour and media. We review recent perspectives on contemporary labour, and note that a persistent theme of this research is that recent changes in the media industries have seen the devaluation of professional work cultures as work in such industries has become more precarious. These changes are set against legacies of the devaluation of women’s work within the media, and negotiations of spaces for women to carve out media careers, which are explored by contributors to this issue. The article concludes by drawing out the need for a historically informed position on the gendering of media labour.

This article discusses the Australian Women's Broadcasting Co-operative (AWBC), formed by women working at the Australian Broadcasting Commission in response to the United Nations' declaration that 1975 would be International Women's Year. It examines the AWBC's attempts to challenge entrenched structural inequalities and sexual discrimination, improve opportunities for women in the organization, and change dominant representations of women's lives in the media. It analyzes the significance of the AWBC's key interventions, including the production of a national weekly radio show for women, The Coming Out Show; the provision of production training for women; pushing for a formal inquiry into the status of women; lobbying for staff childcare facilities; and representing women employees in industrial relations matters. The article concludes with a discussion of the long-term impact of the AWBC and the Coming Out Show, which, despite its genesis as a “bold experiment,” endured for twenty-three years.

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