On being a good worker, a good mother, a good carer: women journalists, motherhood, and caregiving

This paper examines the relationship between journalism, caregiving, and family-building, focusing on women journalists in Portugal. Drawing on a critical thematic analysis of thirty interviews, it explores an analytic framework that includes cultural, structural, and agentic dimensions of career limitations, organised in three overarching themes. The first examines how women journalists experience work constraints stemming from traditional cultural ideals where women are still the main caregivers and work cultures that perpetuate a male perspective on professional routines. The second theme explores the mismatch between work and care responsibilities that arises from prevailing family structures and work processes. The third theme centres on how women journalists respond to constraints by making choices and developing strategies. Journalists’ reflexive deliberations about career decisions, employment conditions, family life and cultural assumptions underpinning parenthood demonstrate the complex interrelationship between cultural and working structures, organisational materiality, and agency. Together, these dimensions replicate patterns that make journalism more inhospitable for women. A central point in this research is that while a systemic gender bias exists beyond the sector, workplace inequalities are particularly consequential for journalism and democracy.