Inequality, invisibility and inflexibility : mothers and carers navigating careers in the Australian screen industries

Australian cinema is replete with films that feature absent mothers, and it is no different on the other side of the camera. Despite considerable changes to the role and position of women as carers in advanced economies since the second wave of feminism, the invisibility of mothers in screen-based employment has persisted. More than three decades of accumulated research findings reveal the persistence of this problem. This chapter presents quantitative and qualitative data from a recently completed national survey of the experiences of over 600 carers and parents working in the Australian screen industries. We find that more than 80% of screen industries employees with caring responsibilities are women. More than 70% of all worker-carers surveyed state that caring has a negative impact on their role, and of these, 86% were women. Based on these findings, we argue for an intervention of ‘care’ to negotiate the future of employment in the screen industries. We discuss ‘practices of care’ such as ‘self-care’, ‘parenting’ and ‘complex motherhood’ to reveal how expectations around the invisible labour of caring specifically affect women’s professional and personal lives and also to demonstrate that there are many dependent stakeholders in the production of a more caring film industry. The invisibility of care, gender inequality and inflexibility as a barrier to combining employment and care are key features of working in the Australian screen industries.