AustLit

'This article examines the pervasive mechanisms of discrimination in Australian public broadcasting in the 1950s and 1960s and considers how concepts of femininity were engaged to maintain the sexual division of labour within one of Australia’s leading cultural institutions, the Australian Broadcasting Commission (ABC). Constructing a collective biography of female producers who challenged gendered work practices, it discusses the obstacles that confronted women in production and considers the social, economic and industrial factors that allowed certain women to become producers when many failed to escape the ABC’s typing pool. Referring to case studies derived from biographical memory sources and industrial documentation, this article historicises the careers of radio and television producers and contextualises their histories against data found in the 1977 Women in the ABC report, to re-imagine the nature of women’s work in Australian broadcasting in the post-war era.'

Source: Abstract.

'In the aftermath of Second World War and in the beginning years of the Cold War, newly elected Prime Minister Robert Menzies reaffirmed the institutional relationship between masculinity and breadwinning that also spoke to a specific national ideal. In accordance with the ‘national narrative of work’, this article looks to historicise the relationship between historically specific understandings of gender and work, and how that relationship was represented in the 1954 Australian film King of the Coral Sea. Based around the pearling industry in the Torres Strait, the film’s narrative shows the introduction of new technology and the management of the workplace; both these representations functioned in accordance with post-war middle-class values. This article argues that King of the Coral Sea’s engagement with gendered ideals of work and class not only carries specific national meanings but also had broader implications for understandings of masculinity in the context of the Australian 1950s.'

Source: Sage Publishing.