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WOMEN PERFORMERS AS WORKERS: GENDER IN RELATION TO ASPECTS OF INDUSTRIAL RELATIONS IN THEATRE AND TELEVISION Deborah Dean Submitted for the degree of Ph.D. in Industrial and Business Studies University of Warwick Warwick Business School November 2003 1 CONTENTS Page number ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS vi DECLARATION vii ABSTRACT viii ABBREVIATIONS ix CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION 1 Separations 2 Marginality: development of an idea 7 Society and marginality 8 The academy and marginality 10 Research aims and their contexts 16 Strategies of social regulation 20 Strategies of legal regulation 22 Strategies of individual regulation 24 Some dimensions of disadvantage 25 Structure 27 CHAPTER 2 FRAMEWORKS 34 Introduction Ideas of gender: material expressions Gendered production 36 2 Segmentation 38 Ideas of gender: selection and differentiation 41 Ideas of gender: constructions of presence 45 Mediating constructions of presence: race/ethnicity and class 47 Mediating constructions of presence: uses of patriarchy 50 Ideas of gender: ideology 56 Commodities: ideas and material expressions 62 Informal strategies: individual regulation and structure/agency 65 Formal strategies of regulation Union regulation 69 Legal regulation 74 Frameworks 81 CHAPTER 3 METHODOLOGIES 85 Introduction Parameters: methodological frameworks 86 Parameters: why women? 91 Parameters: analysis 95 Research sites 98 Research strategies: observation 103 Observation: access 104 Observation: form and uses 106 3 Research strategies: interviews 111 Research strategies: selection of interviewees 112 Interviews: form and uses 124 Research processes Detours 126 Detours: data obscurities 128 Standpoints and omissions 130 CHAPTER 4 STARTING 134 Introduction Formal entry routes 135 Informal entry routes and regulation 143 Gatekeeper as employee and employer-proxy 149 The subsidised theatre sector 157 The terrestrial television sector 162 Review 167 CHAPTER 5 DOING 171 Introduction Formal entry practices and preparatory processes/contexts 173 Gates and gatekeepers 178 Theatre 179 Television 184 4 Writers and the structures of theatre and television 187 The entry process 200 Gates: casting 202 Gates: embodiment and selection 207 Individual regulation 220 Legal and union regulation 224 Review 228 CHAPTER 6 STAYING 231 Introduction Remuneration 234 Wage structures and determinants 237 Gendered patterns 245 Meanings and functions of pay 247 Occupational effects 250 Perception of disparities 258 Career longevity 261 Career longevity: childcare issues 263 Career longevity: ageing 269 Strategies of regulation 274 Review 292 5 CHAPTER 7 DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSIONS 294 Introduction A map of working realities 298 Starting 299 Doing 300 Staying 304 Strategies of regulation Individual regulation 308 Social and legal regulation 312 Translation 318 Women performers as workers 320 BIBLIOGRAPHY 327 6 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Thanks are due first of all to my interviewees for sharing their time and thoughts. I hope that this project goes some way to raising the issues they addressed with such goodwill. Many thanks to my supervisors, Professor Linda Dickens and Dr. Sonia Liff, for their standards, their support and for always asking the right questions; Joe Coughlan, who selflessly read and commented on yards of text with hardly any numbers; Campbell Jones, who helped me learn to read; my other PhD friends who have helped me through: by name Carla Amado, Peter Butler, Stéphane Laurent, Janette Lee, Sandy MacDonald, Anna Morgan-Thomas, Andrew Sparks, Bridgette Sullivan-Taylor, but including many others, students and staff, who have lightened the way; Dr. Wendy Richards for her continual encouragement since M.A. days; Ann Hope, who represents all that is best about the trade union movement; David McFetridge and Caoimhe McAvinchey, both for moving to London to coincide with my fieldwork and for being the truest of friends; my mother-in-law Joyce McDowell and late father-in-law Dugald for their example and belief. Inadequate thanks to Gloria, Bill and Laura Dean for their lifelong emotional and physical support: my parents’ extraordinary shift work as understudies made the production of this thesis possible. There aren’t words: my love, gratitude and apologies to Wallace and Danny McDowell for everything. 7 DECLARATION I have built on work included in my M.A. dissertation to inform parts of the discussion of regulation and this is indicated in the text. Early empirical findings were given in a paper to the Gender, Work and Organization conference held at Keele University in 2001. I have made reference to a co-authored work published during the research period: it is used here to contribute to review of the literature relevant to the thesis. The rest sees light of day for the first time in these pages. 8 ABSTRACT Performing has been a formally unsegregated occupation for almost 350 years and the achievement of status by its women workers is accepted and expected. However, existing quantitative data indicate that systemic gendered disparities exist in relation to access to work, pay and career longevity. As this is an under-researched occupation the aims of the thesis are first, to map central aspects of the working realities of women performers working in subsidised theatre and terrestrial television in the UK and second, to explore perceptions of women performers’ gendered disadvantage in relation to these aspects. These aims are pursued principally through analysis of semi-structured interview data. As part of the primary aims, the purchase of strategies of legal, social and individual regulation is examined in relation to gendered disadvantage. Consideration of data is structured by work on ideas of gender and the labour process; this work is itself addressed through examination of the woman performer’s working experiences and the ways in which these are perceived by the main participants in these experiences. The study finds effective gender segregation, even more finely segregated by overt classifications of age, appearance, race/ethnicity and status. These classifications, allocated by individual perception, are found to frame the working realities of women performers and result in both systemic advantage and, more commonly, disadvantage. The effects of these perceptions are enhanced by the distinctive characteristics of this occupational sector, its labour markets and labour processes. Analysis of these issues leads to discussion of two key suppositions: that women performers inevitably collude in the perpetuation of their own constraints and that the central work experiences of women performers are manifestations of their position as formal and informal proxies for women’s experiences in wider society. 9 ABBREVIATIONS A.D.: Artistic Director [London Drama School 1] CRE: Commission for Racial Equality DaDA: Dance and Drama Awards GOQ: Genuine occupational qualification PACT: Producers Alliance for Cinema and Television PIRS: Producers Industrial Relations Service RRA: Race Relations Act 1976 SDA: Sex Discrimination Act 1975 Subrep: Subsidised repertory theatre [Theatre 1] [London Theatre] TMA: Theatrical Management Association Interviewee abbreviations: A: Agent CD: Casting director D: Director DS: Drama school E: Equity P: Performer Pr: Producer W: Writer 10 CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION this is not magic but Work Bertolt Brecht, The Curtains Performing is a formally unsegregated occupation of longstanding, where the achievement of status by its women workers is accepted and expected. However, existing quantitative data indicate that gendered disparities in key areas of employment persist. In this thesis, through in-depth interviews with and observation of women performers and people in the occupations that shape labour processes in the entertainment sector, the experiences of these workers are examined. Performing as work varies in type, encompassing (amongst other forms) singing (cabaret, pop, opera, musical theatre), dancing (ballet, tap, contemporary dance, musical theatre), stand-up comedy, clowning and mime work as well as acting in theatre, television and radio. This study focuses on women performers acting in subsidised repertory theatre and terrestrial television, as the two principal areas of work for the majority of actor performers. Performing, especially in its acting form, is spoken of as a profession, but it has none of the recognised markers, such as compulsory qualifications or periods of apprenticeship and there are no clear or generally definable career routes to navigate. However, performing work possesses several identifiable general characteristics. 11 Work is largely short-term, casualised and unpredictable; performers are geographically dispersed with no long-term, fixed workplaces; their labour market is perpetually over-supplied and thus competitive (with a permanent unemployment level estimated at approximately 85%), although the work processes themselves are co-operative and highly interdependent. All of the above features are informed by worker and employer awareness of what one theatre manager has summarised as “the actors’ drive to