Abstract
During the Covid-19 pandemic, the postfeminist ideal of “having it all” became more contradictory, as women struggled to juggle work and childcare. This research, using critical discourse analysis, examines how lifestyle and explanatory journalism made sense of this problematic ideal as it became evidently untenable during the pandemic. Here, journalism operates as a discursive structure, obscuring its own complicity in sustaining postfeminist and neoliberal relations around the expectations that surround working mothers.
Get full access to this article
View all access options for this article.
References
1.
Ahmed
S
(2010 ) The Promise of Happiness . Durham, NC : Duke University Press .
2.
Alam
R
(2020 ) I’m drowning. Slate , 14 April. Available at : https://slate.com/human-interest/2020/04/care-for-baby-work-from-home-coronavirus-care-and-feeding.html (accessed 16 September 2021).
3.
Arnold
C
(2020 ) “Incredibly scary”: Single moms fear falling through holes in pandemic safety net. NPR, 26 October. Available at : https://www.npr.org/2020/10/26/925898367/incredibly-scary-single-moms-fear-falling-through-holes-in-pandemic-safety-net (accessed 16 September 2021).
4.
Banet-Weiser
S
(2018 ) Empowered: Popular Feminism and Popular Misogyny . Durham, NC : Duke University Press .
5.
Banet-Weiser
S
Gill
R
Rottenberg
C
(2020 ) Postfeminism, popular feminism, and neoliberal feminism? Sarah Banet-Weiser, Rosalind Gill and Catherine Rottenberg in conversation . Feminist Theory 21 (1 ): 3 –24 .
6.
Barrett
M
(1986 ) Women’s Oppression Today: Problems in Marxist Feminist Analysis . New York : Verso .
7.
Bennett
J
(2021 ) Three American mothers, on the brink. New York Times , 4 February. Available at : https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/02/04/parenting/covid-pandemic-mothers-primal-scream.html (accessed 16 September 2021).
8.
Bowman
E
(2020 ) Sheryl Sandberg: Companies need to “lean in” as pandemic threatens women’s progress. NPR, 1 October. Available at : https://www.npr.org/2020/10/01/919228757/sheryl-sandberg-companies-need-to-lean-in-as-pandemic-threatens-women-s-progress (accessed 16 September 2021).
9.
Brown
W
(2015 ) Undoing the Demos: Neoliberalism’s Stealth Revolution . New York : Zone Books .
10.
Buozis
M
Creech
B
(2018 ) Reading news as narrative: A genre approach to journalism studies . Journalism Studies 19 (10 ): 1430 –1446 .
11.
Butler
J
(2013 ) For what girls only? Postfeminism and the politics of inclusion . Feminist Formations 25 (1 ): 35 –58 .
12.
Cerullo
M
(2021 ) Nearly 3 million U.S. women have dropped out of the labor force in the past year. CBS News , 5 February. Available at : https://www.cbsnews.com/news/covid-crisis-3-million-women-labor-force/ (accessed 16 September 2021).
13.
Chambers
D
Steiner
L
Fleming
C
(2004 ) Women and Journalism . New York : Routledge .
14.
Cheung
M
(2020 ) The No. 1 way to keep COVID-19 from setting women back at work. NBC News , 1 December. Available at : https://www.nbcnews.com/know-your-value/feature/no-1-way-keep-covid-19-setting-women-back-work-ncna1248390 (accessed 16 September 2021).
15.
Chouliaraki
L
(2008 ) The media as moral education: Mediation and action . Media, Culture & Society 30 (6 ): 831 –852 .
16.
Cooper
M
(2020 ) Mothers’ careers are at extraordinary risk right now. The Atlantic , 1 October. Available at : https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2020/10/pandemic-amplifying-bias-against-working-mothers/616565/ (accessed 16 September 2021).
17.
Dent
C
(2008 ) “Journalists are the confessors of the public,” says one Foucauldian . Journalism: Theory, Practice, and Criticism 9 (2 ): 200 –219 .
18.
Donadio
R
(2020 ) The coming setback for women in the workplace. The Atlantic , 28 May. Available at : https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2020/05/france-women-workplace-coronavirus-pandemic/612136/ (accessed 16 September 2021).
19.
Federici
S
(2012 ) Revolution at Point Zero: Housework, Reproduction, and Feminist Struggle . Oakland, CA : PM Press .
20.
Fursich
E
(2009 ) In defense of textual analysis: Recovering a challenged method for media and journalism studies . Journalism Studies 10 (2 ): 238 –252 .
21.
Gill
R
(2007 ) Postfeminist media culture: Elements of a sensibility . European Journal of Cultural Studies 10 (2 ): 147 –166 .
22.
Gill
R
(2008 ) Culture and subjectivity in neoliberal and postfeminist times . Subjectivity 25 (1 ): 432 –445 .
23.
Gill
R
Kanai
A
(2018 ) Mediating neoliberal capitalism: Affect, subjectivity and inequality . Journal of Communication 68 (1 ): 318 –326 .
24.
Gill
R
Scharff
C
(2011 ) New Femininities: Postfeminism, Neoliberalism, and Subjectivity . New York : Palgrave Macmillan .
25.
Gogoi
P
(2020 ) Stuck-at-home moms: The pandemic’s devastating toll on women. NPR, 28 October. Available at : https://www.npr.org/2020/10/28/928253674/stuck-at-home-moms-the-pandemics-devastating-toll-on-women (accessed 16 September 2021).
26.
Goldberg
E
(2020 ) The pandemic’s setbacks for working moms. New York Times , 8 July. Available at : https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/02/insider/virus-working-moms.html (accessed 16 September 2021).
27.
Grose
J
(2021 ) America’s mothers are in crisis. New York Times , 4 February. Available at : https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/04/parenting/working-moms-mental-health-coronavirus.html (accessed 16 September 2021).
28.
Hall
S
(1975 ) Introduction . In:
Smith
ACH
(ed.) Paper Voices: The Popular Press and Social Change, 1935–1965 . London : Chatto & Windus , pp. 11 –24 .
29.
Hall
S
(1992 ) The west and the rest: Discourse and power . In:
Hall
S
Gieben
B
(eds) Formations of Modernity . Malden : Polity , pp.185 –227 .
30.
Hall
S
(2011 ) The neo-liberal revolution . Cultural Studies 25 (6 ): 705 –728 .
31.
Hochschild
AR
(2012 ) The Second Shift: Working Parents and the Revolution at Home , 2nd edn. New York : Viking .
32.
Joshi
S
(2020 ) Work from home is leading to quick burnouts. Here’s how you explain this to a workaholic boss. Vice , 28 May. Available at : https://www.vice.com/en/article/g5pgwq/work-from-home-leading-to-quick-burnouts-how-to-explain-to-a-workaholic-boss (accessed 16 September 2021).
33.
Kitch
C
(2001 ) The Girl on the Magazine Cover . Chapel Hill, NC : University of North Carolina Press .
34.
Kochhar
R
Bennett
J
(2021 ) U.S. labor market inches back from COVID-19 shock, but recovery is far from complete. Pew Research Center, 21 April. Available at : https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2021/04/14/u-s-labor-market-inches-back-from-the-covid-19-shock-but-recovery-is-far-from-complete/ (accessed 16 September 2021).
35.
Kois
D
(2020 ) Everyone needs to work less. Slate , 7 October. Available at : https://slate.com/human-interest/2020/10/covid-let-everyone-work-less.html (accessed 16 September 2021).
36.
Lee
AM
(2020 ) Employees aren’t afraid of going back to the office: They just like working from home. CBS News , 15 October. Available at : https://www.cbsnews.com/news/unafraid-of-returning-to-the-office-many-workers-may-still-opt-to-work-from-home/ (accessed 16 September 2021).
37.
Lewis
H
(2020 ) The Coronavirus is a disaster for feminism. The Atlantic , 19 March. Available at : https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2020/03/feminism-womens-rights-coronavirus-covid19/608302/ (accessed 16 September 2021).
38.
Maddox
J
(2021 ) “Be a badass with a good ass”: Race, freakery, and postfeminism in the #StrongIsTheNewSkinny beauty myth . Feminist Media Studies 21 (2 ): 211 –232 , doi: 10.1080/14680777.2019.1682025.
39.
McRobbie
A
(2013 ) Feminism, the family, and the new “mediated” maternalism . New Formations 80 (81 ): 119 –137 .
40.
Mendes
K
(2011 ) “The lady is a closet feminist!” Discourses of backlash and postfeminism in British and American newspapers . International Journal of Cultural Studies 14 (6 ): 549 –565 .
41.
Nash
L
(2020 ) Women ask themselves, “How can I do this for one more day?”, New York Times , 4 July. Available at : https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/04/opinion/sunday/women-work-coronavirus.html (accessed 16 September 2021).
42.
Orgad
S
De Benedictis
S
(2015 ) The “stay-at-home mother,” postfeminism, and neoliberalism: Content analysis of UK news coverage . European Journal of Communication 30 (4 ): 418 –436 .
43.
Perelman
D
(2020 ) In the COVID-19 economy, you can have a kid or a job. You can’t have both. New York Times , 2 July. Available at : https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/02/business/covid-economy-parents-kids-career-homeschooling.html (accessed 16 September 2021).
44.
Peters
JD
(2001 ) Witnessing . Media, Culture & Society 23 (6 ): 707 –723 .
45.
Peterson
AH
(2020 ) “Other countries have social safety nets. The U.S. has women”, Cultural Study , 11 November. Available at : https://annehelen.substack.com/p/other-countries-have-social-safety (accessed 16 September 2021).
46.
Pierre-Bravo
D
(2020 ) 9 ways young women can “earn it” while working from home during COVID-19. NBC News , 30 April: Available at : https://www.nbcnews.com/know-your-value/feature/9-ways-young-women-can-earn-it-while-working-home-ncna1196601 (accessed 16 September 2021).
47.
Pinsker
J
(2020 ) This isn’t sustainable for working parents. The Atlantic , 9 July. Available at : https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2020/07/working-parents-careers-school-childcare/613936/ (accessed 16 September 2021).
48.
Rottenberg
C
(2014 ) Happiness and the liberal imagination: How Superwoman became balanced . Feminist Studies 40 (1 ): 144 –168 .
49.
Rottenberg
C
(2017 ) Neoliberal feminism and the future of human capital . Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 42 (2 ): 329 –348 .
50.
Simons
S
(2020 ) Living at the office: Moms on the struggle to balance work and family during the pandemic. NPR, 24 September. Available at : https://the1a.org/segments/working-moms-mothers-pandemic/ (accessed 16 September 2021).
51.
Sørensen
S
(2017 ) The performativity of choice: Postfeminist perspectives on work-life balance . Gender, Work and Organization 24 (3 ): 297 –313 .
52.
Springer
K
(2007 ) Divas, evil black bitches, and bitter black women: African-American women in post-feminist and post-civil-rights popular culture . In:
Tasker
Y
Negra
D
(eds) Interrogating Postfeminism: Gender and the Politics of Popular Culture . Durham, NC : Duke University Press , pp. 249 –276 .
53.
Thomas
G
(2009 ) Witness as a cultural form of communication . In:
Frosh
P
Pinchevski
A
(eds) Media Witnessing: Testimony in the Age of Mass Communication . New York : Palgrave Macmillan , pp. 89 –111 .
54.
Usher
N
(2021 ) News for the Rich, White, and Blue: How Place and Power Distort American Journalism . New York : Columbia University Press .
55.
Vavrus
M
(2002 ) Postfeminist News: Political Women in Media Culture . Albany : State University of New York Press .
56.
Vavrus
M
(2007 ) Opting out moms in the news: Selling new traditionalism in the new millennium . Feminist Media Studies 7 (1 ): 47 –63 .
57.
Zelizer
B
(2002 ) Finding aids to the past: Bearing personal witness to traumatic public events . Media, Culture & Society 24 (5 ): 697 –714 .