A slog, a push and a labour of love: How women electronic music artists navigate gendered in/visibility in a creative industry through ‘ameliorative work’

This paper draws on semi-structured interviews with 57 women electronic music artists to establish the concept of ‘ameliorative work’ as unrecognised and/or undervalued effort expended in order to make their working life better. We contribute to critical research into gender inequalities in the creative industries, and in particular consider the under-researched issue of women’s responses to incidents of gender-based discrimination that arise from simultaneously being visible as a woman, while remaining invisible as a creative professional. Ameliorative work is both the potential for betterment and change as well as an effortful burden. We present the complexity of ameliorative work’s impact on women in creative occupations using paranoid and reparative readings, in order to recognise and empower women’s agency in managing the discrimination and marginalisation they encounter in their working lives.