Sex Gender and Work Segregation in Cultural Industries

As Hesmondhalgh and Baker point out in cultural industries there are jobs dominated by women and jobs dominated by men. Women tend to find work in jobs such as production coordination, marketing and PR. Men tend to be found in more creative roles and technical jobs. While the authors claim that stereotypes are the reason for this workplace segregation, Hoffman and Hurst suggest that role schemas actually precede the stereotypes, and the schema are a simply based on what men and women appear socially to be good at. In other words, in the culture industry, shows and films written by men have a better track record with audiences than shows written by women—and though there may be some gender bias there it is the reality of the situation. A production company that puts out shows and films written by women is unlikely to be found, as it is probably not going to appeal to a lot of people. That, however, could also be considered a rationalization of gender segregation. And the fact is that traditional view are challenged in today’s society and workforce.

For instance, Lena Dunham’s show Girls found an audience for six seasons until it was canceled by HBO. The show had a niche audience but Dunham’s output has not been anywhere near as high as another HBO creator—Danny McBride. The difference between men and women is again displayed in this sense: the male has a higher output creatively than the female. Again, this is just one example and one could find examples of female creators who have higher outputs than male creators. The point is that rationalizations occur and facts can be cherry-picked to make one’s point.
Still, culture is changing and many young people today would not allow for the above-mentioned rationalization to even be considered. They do not want to talk about gender segregation as being normal; they want to upend the traditions no matter what the effect is. They would likely give Dunham as many seasons as she wanted to write Girls, and when viewership fell off, what would they do? Meanwhile McBride did Vice Principals and then moved on to The Righteous Gemstones and is now working on more Halloween sequels, none of which will likely be very good—but the fact is that the industry supports his creativity and wants more of it, as audiences (whether they have been programmed by society to or not) flock to see what he puts out.
The culture industry may attempt to put out certain representations of life, some of which will be politically correct and some of which will be politically incorrect, but the audiences are the measuring stick. If the audiences come, it signifies that they like what they are seeing. If they stay away, it means they are not interested. So what are audiences interested in mostly? It depends. Female audiences are more interested in female driven narratives by female creators. Male audiences are interested in Bad Boys for Life. Is this a gender stereotype? Or is gender a real biological function and not a social construct as the politically correct paradigm promotes?
Culture is affected by change and people respond to those changes. More women are entering into roles traditionally reserved for men. There are women occupying technical roles and serving as production heads, making executive decisions. There are women directors and writers. Meanwhile families are changing, and there are more single parent families than there were in the past. What does this suggest about the changing social landscape and the changing workplace? Perhaps ideas about gender are changing because people are having less and less experience with gender differences and they are not seeing them as much as they did in the past.
Works Cited
Hesmondhalgh, David, and Sarah Baker. \"Sex, gender and work segregation in the cultural industries.\" The Sociological Review 63 (2015): 23-36.
Hoffman, Curt, and Nancy Hurst. \"Gender stereotypes: Perception or rationalization?.\" Journal of personality and social psychology 58.2 (1990): 197.