What is ‘freelance feminism’?

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Curran-Troop, Hannah; Gill, Rosalind and Littler, Jo. 2024. What is ‘freelance feminism’? European Journal of Cultural Studies, 27(3), pp. 317-332. ISSN 1367-5494 [Article]

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Official URL: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/136754942...

Abstract or Description

This article introduces the concept of ‘freelance feminism’: a term we use to highlight how a combination of casualised precarious labour and platformised entrepreneurialism constitute a key terrain through which contemporary feminist work is enacted. The article proposes that this term can be a way to understand new formations and constellations of activity which are being shaped in the intersections between precarity, feminism and entrepreneurialism. How, in what ways, and with what consequences are feminist activism and platformised entrepreneurialism becoming entwined? How are new forms of self-promotion, self-branding and precarity shaping feminist cultures? Are entrepreneurial projects more broadly taking on feminist forms and, if so, how can we understand their politics? To explore these issues, the article examines in turn (1) neoliberal, short-term, precarious labour in the cultural industries and its exacerbation during the pandemic, (2) contemporary entrepreneurial ‘platformisation’ and (3) the increased visibility of feminism in contemporary popular culture. It concludes by introducing the range of articles in the special issue.

Item Type:

Article

Identification Number (DOI):

https://doi.org/10.1177/1367549424124080

Additional Information:

Funding: The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/ or publication of this article: Jo Littler is grateful for the support of the Leverhulme Trust, in the form of a 2023-24 Research Fellowship for the project ‘Ideologies of Inequality’, which helped complete this article.

Data Access Statement:

Data sharing not applicable to this article as no datasets were generated or analysed during the current study.

Keywords:

Activism, cultural industries, entrepreneurialism, feminism, freelancing, precarity precarity

Departments, Centres and Research Units:

Media, Communications and Cultural Studies
Institute for Cultural and Creative Entrepreneurship (ICCE)

Dates: