Gender, Freelancing and Flexible Working Schemes in Communication Industries

Date and Time: Thursday, 4 December 2025, 15:00 CET

What to expect from the webinar

This edition of #EUPRERAtalks highlights two recent contributions that revisit and expand research on gender, labour, and the evolving nature of communication work: the Emerald edited book Gender and Freelancing in the Communication Industries: Experiences, Practices, and Discourses (Anton & Moise, 2025), and the Corporate Communications: An International Journal (CCIJ) Special Issue on Flexible Working Schemes in Media and Communication Industries: A Shifting Landscape (forthcoming, 2026).

The webinar explores the changing realities of freelance and flexible work in communication, in light of intensified post-pandemic debates on precarity, gender inequalities, autonomy, and hybrid labour. Drawing on research that spans almost 25 years, from early examinations of gendered labour in communication work to the latest debates shaped by platformisation and flexible work regimes, the session revisits existing knowledge and extends it with new empirical and theoretical contributions from the Emerald book and the CCIJ special issue.

Some of the topics that will be addressed are:

  • How freelancing and flexible work have been theorised over two distinct waves of communication research (2000s vs 2020s)
  • Why gender’s influence on autonomy, visibility, and career mobility remains structurally persistent
  • How flexible work is both opportunity and trap: a pathway to independence and a site of intensified precarity
  • The implications for organisational policy, public relations education, feminist labour studies, and professional identity formation
  • Insights from longitudinal and comparative research from Croatia, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Singapore, Slovenia, Spain, Türkiye, UK, USA.

Speakers

 

Ralph Tench, Director of Research, Leeds Business School, United Kingdom

Ralph Tench is Director of Research at Leeds Business School in the United Kingdom and a former President of EUPRERA. His research involves internationally funded projects from the private sector, the European Union, and research councils. He is author of Europe’s best-selling textbook on strategic communication, “Exploring Public Relations and Management Communication” (5th ed., Pearson).

Anca Anton, Associate Professor, University of Bucharest, Romania

Anca Anton is Associate Professor at the University of Bucharest (Romania), where she teaches public relations, marketing and corporate communication, and sustainability communication. Her research focuses on professional well-being, AI-mediated communication, PR education, freelancing, and media CSR. She organises the FuturePR International Student Competition, co-leads the EUPRERA Education Network and serves as EUPRERA Director of Public Relations and Administration.

Kailey Thompson, doctoral researcher in Communication, University of Alabama, USA

Kailey Thompson is a doctoral researcher in Communication at the University of Alabama (USA). Her work explores gender, leadership, and empowerment in the public relations profession, with a focus on how women navigate and challenge structural barriers within academia and industry.

Moderator – Martina Topić-Rutherford, Associate Professor of Public Relations Leadership, University of Alabama, USA

Martina Topić-Rutherford is Associate Professor of Public Relations Leadership at the University of Alabama (USA) and a leading scholar in behavioural sociology and mass communication. She is Editor-in-Chief of Corporate Communications: An International Journal and the Northern Lights journal, and leads the EUPRERA network Women in PR. Her recent books include Workplace Culture in Mass Communication Industries (Routledge, 2023) and Women in the Media in Capitalism and Socialism: An Ecofeminist Inquiry (Emerald, 2023).

Duration

1 hour