Engendering media work: Institutionalizing the norms of entrepreneurial subjectivity

Abstract

The article analyses how contemporary processes of media production involving temporary work contracts for journalists, long working hours, the demand for unconditional commitment to work and so on push women into unequal position compared to male employees. Attention is paid to ‘engendered’ work in ‘greedy’ media organizations characterized by precarization of work and the related devaluation of journalism as a profession. Rather than detecting the extent of power and position of women in the media, we adopt the materialist analysis of mechanisms that mask gender inequality and contribute to ‘capitalizing’ on gender for the imperative of media productivity. The study was conducted in Slovenia, in Eastern European, post-socialist context, and comprised 33 individual interviews with media managers and workers at three television stations (public TV SLO, and commercial POP TV and Planet TV). In the analysis, we focus on how journalists, by internalizing the disciplining norms of ‘entrepreneurial subjectivity’, become the motivating force behind precarization of work. Although these processes are often perceived as gender neutral even among female journalists, we argue that they are masculinized and have different effects on men and women, among other things due to the individualization of women’s reproductive roles.

Political Economy of Mainstream Television Channels in Ethiopia

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The dark side of journalism: Understanding the phenomenology of conflicts in the newsroom and the mechanisms intended to solve them

“…Current journalism, as a creative craft, follows the labour trends of a neocapitalist system and its inherent precariousness (Armano et al, 2017), understanding the latter as a multidimensional construct that includes low salaries, vulnerability, disempowerment, an increased workload (Campbell and Price, 2016; Julià et al, 2017; Kalinowski, 2019). The traditional connection in journalism between work and life has been blurred, and the periods of work and rest become closely related (Kalinowski, 2019; Pajnik and Hrženjak, 2020). Moreover, the escalating pattern of employment destruction and the weaker role of unions have turned journalism into a growing precarious occupation (Amado and Waisbord, 2018; Deuze and Witschge, 2018; Waisbord, 2019; Goyanes et al, 2020), where both the traditional reluctance to change (Gade, 2004) and the typical lack of contestation to the way things are done (Ryfe, 2012), have been heightened by job insecurity (Ekdale et al, 2015).…”