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

The aim of this research, and the original contribution to knowledge offered by this project
is to understand the impact of class and gender on the roles that working-class women
play 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 the
UK television industry, and their efforts to build careers there? How are working-class
women'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 job
markets and within the arts, this will serve as a foundation for my later research and
interviewing of case studies. I will also incorporate analysis of how the media is seen to
represent the working class from studies such as Chavs in which Jones (2016) analyses
how the media perpetuates perceptions of the working class. I will incorporate this analysis
into my research on the production process to assist in understanding how such
perceptions may manifest behind camera within factual television.
Cultural studies 'at its best [offers] potentially valuable tools for the analysis of culture in
relation to social power' (Hesmondhalgh, 2018. p67). Analysing this social power is a
priority in my study, where I will consider whose voices are heard and how they are
perceived, 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 order
to assess existing data on the sex, race and socio-economic backgrounds of the
workforce. Recent reports from Ofcom suggest that the number of women in television is
declining (Ofcom, 2019) and in recent years Diamond have 6 found that women are
distinctly absent from senior creative roles7. These statistics will give me an understanding
of the makeup of the industry as it currently stands and can then be compared with data
gathered in participant interviews to understand the landscape working-class women are
working within.

To gather this information I will carry out fieldwork interviewing working-class women in the
television industry. I will interview 40 working-class women who work or have worked in
the last 5 years in UK Factual programming. I will speak only with women directly involved
with programme making - Producers, Researchers, Production Management roles for
example - rather than other positions - such as HR or Accounts - in which I feel
employment and experiences will not be so uniquely impacted by the processes of the
television industry. I will speak to women at various stages of their careers in order to
understand how experiences may differ from entry level to executive level as well as how a
woman's stage in life, such as her age or motherhood status may create different factors
that impact her career. I plan to speak with each of the women about their experiences
gaining work and promotions, access to training and peer to peer development and why
they have chosen the job they have. Finally I plan to speak to the women about how they
believe they are perceived and the roles they play within a production, compared to how
they perceive the roles of the men around them. I will record and transcribe each of these
interviews before analysing the data. I will likely use an analysis tool such as Nvivo or
other qualitative data management programme. This will help me organise large amounts
of information and find themes or patterns in participants experiences.