Industry of Mad Men? New figures show women represent a quarter of creatives, 70% of suits
Women represent just a quarter of staff in creative departments according to The Communications Council’s latest Salary Survey, with just 13.5 per cent of senior creative positions occupied by females.
The survey, which comprises data from 115 agencies nationally across 81 positions which equates to approximately 85 per cent of market shows just 27.9 per cent of digital teams are women, with one third, 33.3 per cent, of those women in senior positions.
In account management women make up 70.2 per cent of the workforce, according to the data collected by The Communications Council, an 53 per cent of the leaders, while men only account for 29.8 per cent of those currently working in the discipline, but 46.4 per cent of the top jobs.
Until agencies look at their antiquated systems of ‘you have to be there 9-5 or you’re letting the client down’ then women/mums will never make the top positions as they have more limited choices as they start a family.
By letting mums manage things their own way, through working more flexible hours (shock) and delegating to their staff (no!) then there will never be equality.
Anyway, I’ve set up my own PR Agency which works at my pace, I delegate to my consultants, I work in the evenings and part-time and I have very strict boundaries around my time which I talk to my clients about up front. There are A LOT of women like me, running their businesses online, the way they want, and to be honest its pretty awesome!
As a female creative that started as a graphic designer and has worked across advertising, design and comms I actually think it has more to do with the fact that women may be far more inclined towards the design industry.
There seems to be a very equal spread of male and female designers and I’ve never heard of graphic design having issues with male domination.
Design provides a range of transferable skills and, these days, is well catered for within higher education.
As women know that they will probably need to leave work for a period of time for family etc, could it be that they just feel safer studying something concrete (such as a bachelor of design) that provides freelance and flexibility?
I think the advertising industry gives the impression that you need to be ‘lucky’ to make it rather than providing a clear and attainable career path.
Maybe creative is genetically a male advantage just like chess players, inventors, mathematicians, musicians and spear throwers. If an agency has a gender diversity policy (e.g. page 59 of the STW annual report), and say, the best creative’s are male, and other agencies employ on merit, well there goes relative performance down the toilet.
If really really intelligent telepathic creative green Martians land on earth (this implies a genetic advantage), you would employ them immediately as not only would they be creative geniuses, but also save on buying media.
Thus when the Martians arrive the agencies that tear up their gender diversity policies are the winners. I as a male whoever, I would of course support blonde gender diversity.
I am sick and tired of these stories. Women make up 70% of account management roles. That is compeletely unbalanced. Why is this not the headline?
Men are being pushed out of the PR and communications industry at an alarming rate, by a generation of spoilt rich, bossy young women driving Golfs and wearing Jimmy Choos, and your editorial line never reflects this.
@Scoop – A generation of rich, spoilt bossy young women? Really? Perhaps you should start looking at how to lift your own game to get ahead rather than complaining how everything is unfair…