Meritocracy or Masked Alienation?Gendered Precarity in the Creative Class

Ojonimi Saliahu, Western Michigan University

Ojonimi Salihu

The transformation of labor from the Fordist material era to a post-Fordist IT-driven economy has given rise to what some call a “new class” within the knowledge economy: a creative class promising openness, meritocracy, and inclusivity (Weeks, 2007; Duffy, 2017; Vallas & Schor, 2020). Yet beneath this veneer of opportunity lies a persistent gendered structure that reproduces familiar inequalities in new forms. Historically, the movement of work from the domestic sphere into the factory generated gender divisions that relegated women to unpaid or undervalued labor. Today, intellectual and affective labor in the creative economy—while celebrated for its autonomy and passion—remains embedded in gendered expectations.

McRobbie (2016) and Duffy (2017) shed light on the gendered dynamics that shape this “new class” of creative laborers. McRobbie notes a pronounced gender concentration in media and communications fields, with many female students aspiring to entrepreneurial roles shaped by glamorized narratives of creative success. Duffy critiques the idea of “aspirational labor”—a form of work driven by passion rather than pay—as one that disproportionately burdens women, particularly in digital and cultural industries.

Despite the promise of autonomy, creative laborers often inhabit a precarious position. The digital platform economy has blurred the boundaries between work and self, requiring workers to constantly brand themselves, engage audiences, and cultivate “authentic” relationships. Here, algorithms and social metrics replace traditional bureaucracies, and success is determined less by skill than by one’s ability to perform affective and emotional labor—labor that is feminized and undercompensated (Duffy, 2017; Weeks, 2007).

Women in the creative economy face unique challenges: they must produce content, maintain a public persona, and perform emotional labor that is seen as natural rather than skilled. This reinforces gendered norms by positioning emotional engagement as a given, rather than as laborious. Moreover, the concept of “authenticity”—idealized in the digital marketplace—obscures the fact that this labor is unremitting, surveilled, and unequally distributed. In this way, the creative class reproduces occupational segregation and alienation under the guise of meritocratic openness.

The promise of meritocracy suggests that talent and hard work are the sole determinants of success. However, the reality is more complex. Digital environments emphasize traditionally feminized affective labor, requiring women to dedicate additional time to self-promotion and emotional management (Duffy, 2017; Weeks, 2007). The valorization of authenticity subtly masks the structural inequalities embedded in the platform economy, making exploitation appear voluntary.

In this sense, the creative economy does not escape the alienation traditionally associated with industrial labor; it merely transforms it. Following Marx’s framework, workers in the creative class—particularly women—are alienated not only from the products they create, but from their own identities, emotions, and aspirations. The demand for constant self-promotion, emotional engagement, and aesthetic labor enlists workers’ inner lives as instruments of economic production. Emotional authenticity, far from being liberatory, becomes commodified and subject to market forces. Thus, the creative economy’s meritocratic promises mask a profound alienation, especially along gendered lines.

At the heart of this discussion is the tension between the ideal of a liberated, knowledge-based economy and the lived realities of those who work within it (Milkman et al., 2021). The creative class, as it is often portrayed, is not a neutral space but one that is deeply inflected by traditional gender roles. This dynamic not only reinforces existing inequalities but also creates a precarious environment in which success is as much about navigating the “personality market” as it is about talent or innovation (Weeks, 2007). Ultimately, while the shift from material to immaterial labor has reshaped the contours of work, it has not dismantled the gendered hierarchies that have long defined labor relations.

References

Duffy, B. E. (2017). (Not) Getting Paid to Do What You Love: Gender, Social Media, and Aspirational Work. Yale University Press.

McRobbie, A. (2016). Be Creative: Making a Living in the New Culture Industries. Polity Press.

Milkman, R., Gonzalez, A. L., & Ikeler, P. (2021). Gender, class, and the gig economy: The case of platform-based food delivery. Critical Sociology, 47(3), 357–372. https://doi.org/10.1177/0896920520939195

Vallas, S., & Schor, J. B. (2020). What do platforms do? Understanding the gig economy. Annual Review of Sociology, 46, 274–284. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-soc-121919-054857

Weeks, K. (2007). Life within and against work: Affective labor, feminist critique, and post-Fordist politics. Ephemera: Theory & Politics in Organization, 7(1), 233–249. https://ephemerajournal.org/sites/default/files/2022-01/7-1weeks.pdf