ABSTRACT
Chapter 1 addresses a number of questions about the nature of creative work, the problem of gender inequality in media production, and explores how gender shapes subjectivity and with what consequences for women’s participation in film and television. The key argument is that women experience gender inequality in their everyday engagement with various structural and cultural features of screen production work. These experiences in turn shape women’s subjectivities in various ways. They internalize a self-identity that is either gender ‘neutral’, which denies that gender has any influence on their working lives, or they adopt a subjectivity which is neoliberal, where they focus on the self as the locus of all responsibility for work outcomes, or they adopt a position whereby they see themselves as liminal, they simultaneously identify as film or television workers but also recognize that they are outsiders because of gender. With regard to what women do with those various internalizations, two of these subjectivities preclude any sense that change can be brought about through collective action. It is really only women who see and acknowledge their position as liminal entities, as both insiders and outsiders, who can take action to make changes to those logics and processes, which are so embedded in the industry. Subsequent chapters further develop understanding of these gendering processes and outline how they map into the case study of gender and change in Ireland.
