ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the psychological operationalisation of ‘stigma’ as a productive process which serves to undermine mother’s position as workers within the UK’s creative media industries. Building on the literature on stigma and gender inequality in the creative media sector of the creative and cultural industries the chapter considers the stigmatisation of a typology of maternal practice within creative labour markets as a corrosive force that undermines women’s ability to combine care and creative work. Drawing from a series of qualitative interviews with mothers who either work or had previously worked in the creative media sector, the chapter discusses how caregiving practice is undermined, driving women to either opt out of the work itself or outsource care to an external source. The chapter considers the multiple stigmatisations that undervalue and discriminate women’s labour value in the sector and the legacy of this process in terms of the wider inequalities and barriers to creative work.
