Women At Work - Softcover

• Women at Work in Twenty-First-Century European Cinema.
• From hairdressers and caregivers to reproductive workers and power-suited executives, images of women's labour have powered a fascinating new movement within twenty-first-century European cinema. 

• Social realist dramas capture precarious working conditions. Comedies exaggerate the habits of the global managerial class. Stories from countries battered by the global financial crisis emphasize the patriarchal family, debt, and unemployment.

• Author Barbara Mennel delves into the ways these films about female labour capture the tension between feminist advances and their appropriation by capitalism in a time of ongoing transformation.

Looking at independent and genre films from a cross-section of European nations, Mennel sees a focus on economics and work adapted to the continent's varied kinds of capitalism and influenced by concepts in second-wave feminism. More than ever, narratives of work put female characters front and centre and have female directors behind the camera. Yet her analysis shows that each film remains a complex mix of progressive and retrogressive dynamics as it addresses the changing nature of work in Europe.

Pages: 245

Published: January 2019

Size (cm): 23 x 16 x 2

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