The Role of Class and Gender politics on Working-Class Women's position in the UK Factual Television Industry

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The aim of this research, and the original contribution to knowledge offered by this projectis to understand the impact of class and gender on the roles that working-class womenplay in the UK factual television industry.My research questions are:What role do gender and class politics play in efforts by working-class women to enter theUK television industry, and their efforts to build careers there? How are working-classwomen's careers shaped by their gender and socioeconomic background?I will be taking a cultural studies approach to my research, firstly looking at creative labour.Typically studies focus on feminism and the ability of women to work in precarious jobmarkets and within the arts, this will serve as a foundation for my later research andinterviewing of case studies. I will also incorporate analysis of how the media is seen torepresent the working class from studies such as Chavs in which Jones (2016) analyseshow the media perpetuates perceptions of the working class. I will incorporate this analysisinto my research on the production process to assist in understanding how suchperceptions may manifest behind camera within factual television.Cultural studies 'at its best [offers] potentially valuable tools for the analysis of culture inrelation to social power' (Hesmondhalgh, 2018. p67). Analysing this social power is apriority in my study, where I will consider whose voices are heard and how they areperceived, specifically in the context of those working in the television industry.I will collate existing data from companies such as Ofcom, Talent manager and Diamond,additionally Freedom of Information requests (FOIs) may be considered beneficial in orderto assess existing data on the sex, race and socio-economic backgrounds of theworkforce. Recent reports from Ofcom suggest that the number of women in television isdeclining (Ofcom, 2019) and in recent years Diamond have 6 found that women aredistinctly absent from senior creative roles7. These statistics will give me an understandingof the makeup of the industry as it currently stands and can then be compared with datagathered in participant interviews to understand the landscape working-class women areworking within.To gather this information I will carry out fieldwork interviewing working-class women in thetelevision industry. I will interview 40 working-class women who work or have worked inthe last 5 years in UK Factual programming. I will speak only with women directly involvedwith programme making - Producers, Researchers, Production Management roles forexample - rather than other positions - such as HR or Accounts - in which I feelemployment and experiences will not be so uniquely impacted by the processes of thetelevision industry. I will speak to women at various stages of their careers in order tounderstand how experiences may differ from entry level to executive level as well as how awoman's stage in life, such as her age or motherhood status may create different factorsthat impact her career. I plan to speak with each of the women about their experiencesgaining work and promotions, access to training and peer to peer development and whythey have chosen the job they have. Finally I plan to speak to the women about how theybelieve they are perceived and the roles they play within a production, compared to howthey perceive the roles of the men around them. I will record and transcribe each of theseinterviews before analysing the data. I will likely use an analysis tool such as Nvivo orother qualitative data management programme. This will help me organise large amountsof information and find themes or patterns in participants experiences.