Media Work, Mothers and Motherhood: Negotiating the International Audiovisual Industry

235 Pages·2021·2.154 MB·English

by  Susan Liddy, Anne O’ Brien

Media Work, Mothers
and Motherhood
This interdisciplinary and international volume offers an innovative and
critical exploration of the impact of motherhood on the engagement
of women in media and creative industries across the globe. Diverse
contributions critically engage with the intersections and overlap between the
social categories of worker and mother, and the work of media production
and maternal caregiving.
Conflicting ideas about, and expectations of, mothers are untangled in the
context of the working world of radio, film, television and creative media
industries. The book teases out commonalities between experiences that are
evident across a number of countries, from Hollywood to Bollywood, as
well as examining the differences between class, religion, maternal status
and cultural frameworks that surround working mothers in various nation
states. It also offers some possibilities for ways forward that can improve the
lives of women workers who are also mothers.
A timely and valuable contribution to international debates on equality,
mothers and motherhood in audiovisual industries, this book will be of
interest to scholars and students of media, communication, cultural studies
and gender; programmes engaged with work inequalities and motherhood
studies; and activists, funders, policymakers and practitioners.
Susan Liddy lectures in the Department of Media and Communication
Studies in MIC, University of Limerick. Her recent work includes: Women
in the Irish Film Industry: Stories and Storytellers (ed.) (2020) and Women
in the International Film Industry: Policy, Practice and Power (ed.) (2020).
She is Chair of Women in Film and Television Ireland and a board member
of Women in Film and Television International, the Writers Guild of Ireland
and Raising Films Ireland. She is founder and co-director of Catalyst
International Film Festival, Limerick.
Anne O’ Brien is Associate Professor in the Department of Media Studies
at Maynooth University. She has published on the representation of women
in radio and television and on women workers in creative industries, and
she has examined why women leave careers in screen production. Her most
recent book is entitled Women, Inequality and Media Work (2019).
Routledge Studies in Media and Cultural Industries
1 Community Filmmaking
Diversity, Practices and Places
Edited by Sarita Malik, Caroline Chapain and Roberta Comunian
2 Reconceptualising Film Policies
Edited by Nolwenn Mingant and Cecilia Tirtaine
3 Asia-Pacific Film Co-productions: Theory, Industry and Aesthetics
Edited by Dal Yong Jin and Wendy Su
4 Audiovisual Industries and Diversity
Economics and Policies in the Digital Era
Edited by Luis A. Albornoz and Maria Trinidad García Leiva
5 Political Economy of Media Industries
Global Transformations and Challenges
Edited by Randy Nichols and Gabriela Martinez
6 Authorship as Promotional Discourse in the Screen Industries
Selling Genius
By Leora Hadas
7 Transnational Latin American Television
Genres, Formats and Adaptations
By Nahuel Ribke
8 Media Work, Mothers and Motherhood
Negotiating the International Audiovisual Industry
Edited by Susan Liddy and Anne O’ Brien
For more information about this series, please visit: www.routledge.com/
Routledge-Studies-in-Media-and-Cultural-Industries/book-series/RSMCI
Media Work, Mothers
and Motherhood
Negotiating the International
Audiovisual Industry
Edited by Susan Liddy
and Anne O’ Brien
First published 2021
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa
business
© 2021 selection and editorial matter, Susan Liddy and
Anne O’ Brien; individual chapters, the contributors
The right of Susan Liddy and Anne O’ Brien to be identified as
the authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for their
individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections
77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or
reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical,
or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including
photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or
retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks
or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and
explanation without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
A catalog record for this book has been requested
ISBN: 978-0-367-53600-8 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-0-367-53601-5 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-003-08255-2 (ebk)
Typeset in Sabon
by Apex CoVantage, LLC
For my mother, my daughter and my granddaughter.
Kitty (Barry) Liddy, Chloe Liddy Judge and Evie Liddy
McDonagh; united on the page. And for Criena Moscone
for keeping the faith.
To Finn and Odhran, for being cool dudes and being
funny (they dictated this) and for giving me first-hand
insights into mothering and work.

Contents
List of figures and tables ix
1 Motherhood and media work: an introduction 1
SUSAN LIDDY AND ANNE O’ BRIEN
PART 1
Who cares in screen production? 11
2 Inequality, invisibility and inflexibility: mothers and carers
navigating careers in the Australian screen industries 13
SHEREE K. GREGORY AND DEB VERHOEVEN
3 Managing Wollstonecraft’s Dilemma: matriarchs in the
Nigerian broadcast news media and the politics of childcare 30
GANIYAT TIJANI-ADENLE
4 Representing and experiencing motherhood on- and off-
screen in Swedish film 45
MARIA JANSSON AND LOUISE WALLENBERG
5 The mother of a famous child: the media representation of
Shirley Temple’s ‘Mother’ in Hollywood, 1934–1940 63
TSZ LAM NGAI
PART 2
Intersectionality and media mothers 77
6 Negotiating motherhood in the Colombian audiovisual
industry: a matter of capital 79
ALEJANDRA CASTANO-ECHEVERRI AND ANDRÉS
CORREA-GONZÁLEZ
viii Contents
7 The future of Muslim women behind the scenes of the
Malaysian TV industry 95
NUR KAREELAWATI ABD KARIM
8 British television production and women without children:
exclusionary practice in the turn to care 111
ROWAN AUST
PART 3
Stigma, subjectivity and celebrity 127
9 The operation of maternal stigma in the creative and
cultural industries 129
TAMSYN DENT
10 Mothers’ subjective experiences of negotiating caring
responsibilities with work in the Scottish film and television
industries 145
SUSAN BERRIDGE
11 Bollywood mothers: work-life imbalance 160
VIRAJ SUPARSAD
PART 4
Solutions for better futures 177
12 The gendered practice of the TV opt-out 179
PERELANDRA BEEDLES
13 Negotiating motherhood: the search for solutions 197
SUSAN LIDDY AND ANNE O’ BRIEN
List of contributors 213
Index 217
List of figures and tables
Figures
2.1 Respondent income 23
4.1 Paradistorg (Lindblom, 1977). Katha (Birgitta Valberg),
medical doctor and single mother of two (and grandmother
of three), together with her ageing parents, Wilhelm (Holger
Löwenadler) and Alma (Dagny Lind), in Paradistorg by
Gunnel Lindblom (1977). Photographer: Johan Nyqvist 51
4.2 Mamma/Mother (Osten, 1982). Gerd Osten (Malin Ek) as
aspiring film director in Susanne Osten’s Mamma (1982).
Photographer: Hans Welin 53
4.3 Tsatsiki, mom and the police man (Lemhagen, 1999).
Intimacy and togetherness between mother (Alexandra
Rapaport) and son (Samuel Haus) in Ella Lemhagen’s
Tsatsiki, morsan och polisen (1999). Photographer: Anders
Bohman 54
4.4 Min skäggiga mamma / My bearded mom (Hedman
Hvitfeldt, 2003). The mother (Malena Engström) ‘becoming
horse’ in Maria Hedman Hvitfeldt’s Min skäggiga mamma
(2003). Photographer: Peter Palm 56
4.5 Dröm vidare / Beyond dreams (Sekersöz, 2017). Best
friends Sarah (Gizem Erdogan), Mirja (Evin Ahmad),
Nina (Segen Tesfai) and Emmy (Malin Persson) in Rojda
Sekersöz’s debut film Dröm vidare (2017). Photographer:
Alexandra Aristohova 58
6.1 Gender representation by age groups. Women’s
representation is at its highest in their twenties, then tends
to decrease. Men’s representation is stable between their
twenties and thirties, then starts to fade. 83
Tables
2.1 Respondent characteristics 18
6.1 Parents’ terms of employment 87
7.1 The profile of participants 101