Unsuitable Jobs for Women. Women’s Behind-the-Scenes Employment and Female On-Screen Representation in Italian TV Crime Drama

In recent years, several international and national reports have highlighted the lack of systematic and comparable data on gender-related issues in audiovisual media, also due to the difficulties of collecting and analysing huge dataset. At the same time, they have emphasized that access to such knowledge is crucial for both raising awareness and developing effective policies and best practices to promote inclusion in this strategic field. Based on these premises, this article combines a data-driven approach, text-based analysis, and production studies to analyse the portrayal of female characters and women’s employment in Italian crime dramas. The aim is twofold: on the one hand, to understand how these productions address gender issues both behind-in the-scenes and on-screen perspectives; on the other hand, to assess whether and how sample analysis can provide general trends comparable to those emerging from broader datasets. Data analysis reveals a bleaker scenario, with a significant lack of diversity and pronounced gender inequalities both in on-screen representations and behind-the-scenes employment. As for the effectiveness of sample analysis, it proves highly effective in mapping behind-the-scenes roles, particularly in shorter crime dramas where crew turnover is limited. On the other hand, its effectiveness in analysing on-screen representation is more reliable for relatively stable variables like age and race, whereas it may fall short in tracking character attributes that evolve over time (e.g., sexual orientation, sentimental status, occupational condition, or narrative role). Despite the need to complement this data-driven approach with additional qualitative methods, the study suggests that findings obtained by sample analysis may extend beyond the crime genre, encouraging further investigations into gender equality in the Italian audiovisual sector.