Women Working in Radio. Methodological Approaches Comparing Italy and the International Context

For several years, studies on media production have cut radio work out of consideration. This is due to the structural and economic lightness of the audio medium, which employs fewer people than the audiovisual sector in percentage terms; it is also due to the flexibility of professional roles, which are often subject to reshuffling and overlapping; and finally, to an unstable factor in the evolutionary dynamics of the medium, which has continually changed formats, technologies and organisation models over the last century. The dearth of academic work on radio production is much more evident if we focus on gender issues, and even more when looking at the Italian landscape in comparison with similar international realities. Therefore, the article aims to review a wide range of sources on the ways in which the role of women in radio production has been studied in scholarly contexts across the world. Then it briefly traces the state of the art of radio studies in Italy and in particular the gaps and opportunities of production studies applied to radio, proposing ways in which Italian scholarship on radio can and should “catch up”.