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Researching around our subjects: Working towards a women’s labour history of trade unions in the British film and television industries

Galt, Frances C.

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Authors

Frances C. Galt



Contributors

Sarah Arnold
Editor

Anne O'Brien
Editor

Abstract

This article explores the opportunities and obstacles of researching women’s trade union activism in the British film and television industries between 1933 and 2017. The surviving material on women’s union participation is incomplete and fragmented, and so my research has combined an examination of archival material—the union’s journal and the meeting minutes, correspondence and ephemera of three iterations of its equality committee—with new and existing oral history interviews. Sherry J. Katz has termed this methodological approach “researching around our subjects”, which involves “working outward in concentric circles of related sources” to reconstruct women’s experiences (90). While “researching around my subjects” was a challenging and time-consuming process, it was also a rewarding one, producing important insights into union activism as it relates to gender and breaking new ground in both women’s labour and women’s film and television history. This article concludes with a case study on the appointment of Sarah Benton as researcher for the ACTT’s Patterns report in 1973, revealing the benefits of this methodological approach in reconstructing events which have been effectively erased from the official record.

Citation

Galt, F. C. (2020). Researching around our subjects: Working towards a women’s labour history of trade unions in the British film and television industries. Alphaville: Journal of Film and Screen Media, 166-188. https://doi.org/10.33178/alpha.20.12

Journal Article Type Article
Acceptance Date May 8, 2020
Online Publication Date Jan 27, 2021
Publication Date 2020
Deposit Date May 11, 2022
Publicly Available Date Mar 28, 2024
Journal Alphaville: Journal of Film and Screen Media; Doing Women's Film Television History
Print ISSN 2009-4078
Peer Reviewed Peer Reviewed
Issue 20
Pages 166-188
DOI https://doi.org/10.33178/alpha.20.12
Public URL https://uwe-repository.worktribe.com/output/9305633

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Researching around our subjects: working towards a women’s labour history of trade unions in the British film and television industries (608 Kb)
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Licence
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/

Publisher Licence URL
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/

Copyright Statement
This is the published version. An online version is available:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.33178/alpha.20.12

licensed under a CC BY NC 4.0 license https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/




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