“You know, there are ‘hidden rules’”: Chinese female journalists’ gendered experiences in different work settings

Abstract

ABSTRACT This study explores the gendered experiences of 17 Chinese female journalists across different working environments (i.e., party news outlets, commercial news organisations, and the freelance market). It found that female journalists employed by news organisations suffered from and were variously implicated in workplace sexual harassment and assault, a lack of professional autonomy in regard to women’s issues, and institutional discrimination due to pregnancy and motherhood. Freelance female journalists, by comparison, while largely escaping the negative impact of gendered workplaces, face other forms of sexual harassment and sexism due to precarious working conditions (e.g., gendered earning uncertainty, a lack of institutional and social security, and harassment from male sources and readers which is often sexual in nature). Here, gender and unstable working arrangements interact. Providing first-hand accounts of these issues, these interviews allow us to understand how Chinese female journalists’ gendered experiences are shaped by the environments in which they work. This article thus argues that such gender issues should not be viewed in isolation, but rather analysed in relation to the nature and structural environments of female journalists’ specific work units.