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Women and Work in Family Soap Operas
Author(s) -
Czarniawska Barbara,
ErikssonZetterquist Ulla,
Renemark David
Publication year - 2013
Publication title -
gender, work and organization
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.159
H-Index - 73
eISSN - 1468-0432
pISSN - 0968-6673
DOI - 10.1111/j.1468-0432.2011.00569.x
Subject(s) - trace (psycholinguistics) , underpinning , soap , focus (optics) , sociology , work (physics) , everyday life , popular culture , variety (cybernetics) , point (geometry) , reproduction , aesthetics , gender studies , media studies , art , linguistics , political science , computer science , engineering , law , ecology , biology , philosophy , mathematics , artificial intelligence , world wide web , optics , civil engineering , geometry , mechanical engineering , physics
The starting point of this article is the assumption that images of work and organizing produced by popular culture both reflect and shape actual practices. Among various genres of popular culture, soap operas deserve more attention. This article analyses three local soap operas: one Italian, one Swedish and one South African. All three focus on family life — a focus typical for the genre. We trace the side topic of women at work and women and work, on the assumption that its marginality renders it less likely to contain intentional messages from the creators of the series, and thus more likely to reflect the taken‐for‐granted beliefs underpinning everyday life and contributing to their reproduction and maintenance. We trace the series' connections to local contexts but also look for commonalities that may be characteristic of this genre of popular culture.