Working Women on Screen: Paid Labour and Fourth Wave Feminism
Working Women on Screen: Paid Labour and Fourth Wave Feminism (2024) edited by Ellie Tomsett, Nathalie Weidhase and Poppy Wilde, critically examines screen media representations of women’s participation in the contemporary labour market. The collection brings together contributions on Aesthetic Labour; Power, Politics, and Neoliberal Industries; and Sex, Sexuality, and Relationships.
Within the context of fourth wave feminism, there has been a new proliferation in the global media landscape of representations of women’s paid labour. This has coincided with the development of critical and ideological issues surrounding intersectionality and culture wars, as well as the impacts of recessions, political upheavals, and pandemics. Workplace dynamics and post-#MeToo politics have led to the complexification of structures, oppressions and relationships that impact what women can do for money. As a result, the “working woman” is now a constant presence on our screens, though articulated in widely divergent ways. The chapters within this collection critique issues that are deeply embedded in neoliberal conceptions of contemporary feminism, such as aspects of “lean-in” culture, structural oppression, and women’s experiences of the “glass ceiling” and “glass cliff”.
The volume as a whole will analyse representations related to the intersecting dynamics of gender, race, class, sexuality, and disability in television, film, social media and video games. It will be key reading for students and scholars in media, gender, and cultural studies.