Sexism in the PR industry – a CEO looks back over her career
Nicole Webb is founder and CEO of The IMPACT Agency, a company she built over a quarter-century. Here, she reflects on the blatant gender bias within her industry – and what needs to be done to fix things.
When writing a piece on what I’ve learnt about running my own agency for 25 years, my mind went in many directions, but it always came back to one thing: gender.
As a young PR graduate, I received an award for young practitioner of the year. Attending the PRIA (now CPRA) awards night, I have very strong memories of the men in the room going up to the podium to accept the accolades. No women; just the men. It was the early 90s.
Gendered roadblocks make it hard to run a business
Over the course of IMPACT’s 25-year history, we’ve worked alongside some incredible men – many of whom have been terrific allies for the women they work with.
Honest question: what is the male to female ratio in PR?
In my experience, it has always appeared to be largely led and been dominated by women (in contrast to creative agencies).
Being asked if there are any males in the team doesn’t necessarily equate to sexism. If an all male creative agency cohort were pitching, they’d either be asked the reverse of this question, or simply eliminated for lack of diversity.
Given the dominance of females in PR and the surrounding ecosystem – A client asking about gender equality seems like a perfectly reasonable question.