AustLit

'This thesis examines the careers of women who attained positions of authority in the privileged environment of Australian public broadcasting between the 1940s and 1970s, and reimagines the nature of women’s work at the Australian Broadcasting Commission (ABC). It counteracts the widespread assumption that women were largely absent in post-war broadcasting, and reveals how and why a group of women, each with their own issues and ideologies to contribute to national debates, used the ABC as a vehicle for their activism. Framed primarily through group biography, this history details how certain ABC women manifested their own agency within the limitations of the time and place, in both the messages they produced as radio and television producers, and through their positions within the gendered post-war workplace. It details the industrial strategies that female broadcasters activated in order to succeed – their transmedial methods, transformative departures, transnational exchanges and technical training – and the key industrial alliances they utilised to traverse previously inaccessible avenues of opportunity. Taking an intersectional approach, this thesis also juxtaposes the careers of elite female producers against the majority of women workers at the ABC, contextualising the barriers, both official and unofficial, that prevented most women from sharing the same authority, opportunity and privilege that their male counterparts experienced. Challenging the male-centric narratives that dominate broadcasting historiography, this thesis examines the systems of exclusion and discrimination in the ABC workplace and highlights the nature of women’s work in public broadcasting; it enriches the historical landscape of women’s experiences and contributions within Australian broadcasting.'

Source: Abstract.

'During the first decade of television in Australia, a cohort of female broadcasters used their hard-won positions at the Australian Broadcasting Commission (ABC) to challenge the social and cultural complacencies of post-war society. Counteracting the assumption that women were largely absent in post-war broadcasting, this research discusses how two of these producers used their roles as public broadcasters to enact their own version of feminism, a social and cultural activism framed through active citizenship. Critiquing race, gender and national identity in their programmes, they partnered with Indigenous Australian activists and worked to amplify the voices of minorities. Referring to documentaries produced in Australian television’s formative years, this article describes how ABC producers Therése Denny and Joyce Belfrage worked to disrupt programming cultures that privileged homogeneous Anglo-Australian perspectives. As a consequence, documentaries like A Changing Race (1964) presented empathetic and evocative content that challenged xenophobic stereotypes and encouraged cross-cultural understandings.'

Source: Abstract.

'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.