Genre Anxiety: Women Travel Writers' Experience of Work

Abstract

This article explores how the concept of genre can enrich our understanding of gender inequality in media industries. All media work takes place within genre-specific production worlds, which seem to be gender-segregated. By examining the gendered and gendering ideology of genres, an outcome of genre-gender discursive, historical and cultural crossover, we obtain a holistic view of the complexities of the psycho-biographical gender dynamics of media work. To this end, I trace the ways in which the andocentric genre of travel writing (a genre based on a masculine ideology) causes professional anxiety and constrains female travel writers' biographical identity work. By treating genres as mediators of work experiences and practices, I elucidate how contemporary female travel writers experience and cope with genre-induced anxiety.