Working Parent, Reporting Live: Life Inside the Media Machine
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Working Parent, Reporting Live: Life Inside the Media Machine
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About this listen
The media industry, where workers are expected to stay connected, informed and deliver 24/7, may not at first glance seem like a place that’s inclusive for parents and carers.
But broader trends towards family-friendly conditions, flexibility and inclusivity have seen employers in this space driving change in unexpected ways.
The media landscape is constantly evolving, and professionals in the industry are regularly having to evolve with it, whether that be through developing new skills, working across multiple platforms or staying on top of algorithms.
Speaking on the Family Friendly Workplaces podcast, the Village co-founder, Lauren Thornborough, says the “fast-paced” industry is an exciting one but can be challenging.
Her own experience as a parent navigating the media world inspired her to co-found a support and advocacy group for parents in the industry.
“When I had my first child, I took six and a half months off, which is a short timeframe for some people,” Thornborough says. “But I was quite shocked when I came back from maternity leave, how much had changed and evolved in such a short space of time.” “I was used to being a high-functioning employee, and yet, I had to come back in and almost retrain myself. You cannot just rest on your laurels. You need to constantly be learning.”Thornborough and her co-founder, Louise Wilson, are ambitious professionals with more than three decades of combined experience in the industry, and both also happen to be working mums.
“Media has one of the worst churns of all the industries,” she says.“[It’s] such a shame to see talent going out the door because we can’t support them appropriately.“Media is quite a young workforce, so it’s great when you’re in your 20s – all the social occasions that are available to you – but as you move later on in life, maybe that’s not so important to you, and of course if you have family that sort of compounds that issue.“[It’s] not often that you see people in their 40s, in their 50s, in their 60s thriving in this industry.”Thornborough says this is mainly because of a lack of visibility and support for staff juggling family obligations with career goals.
In Australia, employers in many industries are working to improve conditions for working parents and carers, but the media world has a long way to go.
According to data from the Australian Workplace Gender Equality Agency, the advertising and media sector has a gender pay gap of up to 26 per cent, which is higher than the national average.
Nevertheless, there is progress being made to improve conditions, with 60% of the media firms that completed the Family Friendly Workplaces benchmarking assessment passing, as well as certified employers ranking high on flexible work and work-life balance.
Speaking on the latest episode of the Family Friendly Workplaces podcast, the founding editor of Women’s Agenda, Angela Priestley, says she’s been lucky...