The Gendered Impact of Caring Responsibilities on Parents' Experiences of Working in the Film and Television Industries

Abstract

The gendered impact of caring responsibilities on parents' experiences of working in the film and television Caring responsibilities are often cited as a key reason for continuing gendered inequalities across the film and television sector (Wreyford, 2018; Wing-Fai et al, 2015; Creative Scotland, 2016; Raising Films, 2016). However, there is little detailed analysis of precisely how caring responsibilities impact upon parents' experiences of work in this field. Further, in a context in which women are disproportionately affected by caring responsibilities, it is not surprising that existing studies on the issue of care have tended to focus exclusively on women and motherhood. This female centricity risks replicating the essentialist notion that care is or should be a women's responsibility and obscures the fact that many men working in the sector are also parents (Gill, 2014). By drawing on one-to-one interviews with both men and women who work in Scottish film and television, this article will explore the specific gendered dimensions of the ways in which men and women discuss the impact of childcare on their experiences of work.