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In the 'new' economy, the virtues of creative and cultural industry production are widely promoted and idealized. For women, set free from their 'feudal chains', the 'cool creative and egalitarian' (Gill, 2002, p.70) cultural economy -particularly in areas such new media, music, design and fashionappears to offer paths to workplace freedom. But is this really so? Using evidence from the digital 'new media' sector, this paper builds on the work of Lash (1994) and Adkins (1999), which suggests that the ostensibly 'detraditionalized' cultural economy continues to play host to some markedly regressive 'traditional' social structures. In particular it is shown how the new media sector exhibits some clear continuity with the 'old' economy in terms of some enduring gender inequality and discrimination. However, more positively, evidence is presented of how women have been able to take advantage of individualized workplace structures and develop more autonomous and reflexive workplace roles.

While the ‘culturalization’ of the economy has led some to welcome the ‘turn to life’ (Heelas, 2002) and anticipate the remoralization of economic activity, others argue the cultural turn is conducive only to consolidating neo-liberalism's characteristic demoralization of economic relations.The cultural industries, as a leading sector of the culturalized economy, are seen to be particularly culpable in this respect, offering the illusion of freedom, but actually eroding the ethical basis of work through tendencies for individuation and exploitation. Building on the recent renewal of interest in ‘moral economy’, this article argues that claims for the demoralization of cultural industries may be premature. Empirical evidence is presented from interviews with cultural entrepreneurs in Manchester, UK, to reveal how social and political values are biographically important and made evident in the routine context of work. The conclusion offers that individualization may provide some opportunity to re-establish (non-economic) moral and ethical values at work.