Sep
Gender and PR
Bruce MacLellan
An interesting topic for the public relations profession is whether we will one day need affirmative action programs to recruit males. I say this mostly in jest, but it is interesting to look at the statistics on gender and employment in our industry.
According to official employment figures from Statistics Canada from 1991 to 2006, the percentage of people employed in public relations who are female increased from 62% to 68%. That’s not a huge increase, but it occurred during a period when the total number of positions in the sector exploded by 64% to 36,905. Almost 11,000 women entered the business while fewer than 3,000 men joined our ranks.
If you visit PR classrooms or look around agency offices, you will see the same proportions. I know some agency heads (male and female) who wish they could achieve better balance on their teams by adding a few more males.
The main point is that our profession needs to reflect the society we interpret and represent. That applies to diversity and it is why our mix of people and backgrounds at Environics has improved in recent years. A reasonable mix of men and women should be a part of that balance.
I think there are a few reasons behind this trend, some positive. One of the best reasons is that PR offers few barriers to entry for talented, creative and competent people, regardless of gender. Despite the progress made in women’s equality, there are still many professions with a glass ceiling, a term we heard recently from Hillary Clinton, who was proud to put about 18-million cracks in it.
The fact that our industry is so attractive to females and that it has so many senior female PR executives is a great thing. The lack of barriers and recognition of talent played a major role in women advancing in the advertising agency industry many years ago.
Another theory I have heard is that PR requires the sort of emotional intelligence and sensitivity more likely to be found with women. I am not sure about this notion, but it may have some merit.
More troubling, and this point as referenced on our blog recently by Jen Hills, is the incorrect image of PR people as social conveners. Many news outlets report on female party organizers and celebrity publicists as PR people. A Toronto paper recently devoted almost a page to them as part of the film festival coverage! But I can’t recall the mainstream news media giving the same profile to the men and women managing communication issues such as product recalls, corporate mergers and other topics.
This imbalance of coverage underlines the need for our profession to send out continuously the correct image of what we do and why it is an attractive and exciting career for everyone. We are in an intellectual capital business that requires perception and analytical skills, creativity, listening ability and powers of persuasion. We should hope that 100% of the population considers our profession as a good career, so that we attract the very best.
Agreed. And surely this imbalance is best addressed at the college/university level, so that employers can later choose from a pool of excellent candidates of all stripes, rather than being forced to compromise if they wish to achieve a gender balance or other diversity goals.
What is your take on the age balance within the PR industry?
In general, I think women are better at multi-tasking and adhering to deadlines and working under pressure. At its most fundamental, the female of most (all?) species is the designated or better hunter. She goes out and searches for the quarry, whether it’s food, clothing or a media hit. As with everything, there are exceptions, but this might be one innate reason why the gender-gap is so skewed.
At least if you’re not a creationist.
It’s interesting, though, that Hollywood almost always depicts the “PR person” or publicist as a female, while the political spin-doctor or aide is generally male.
I think it’s also interesting to look at the gender imbalance in journalism since PR professionals deal with journalists on a daily basis. In my first year journalism class at Carleton University there were over 200 people, and maybe about 20-30 males. Could it be for the same reasons mentioned above? If women work better under pressure and are better with deadlines this would definitely help in journalism as well as PR.
But if the stereotypical PR professional is the female party-planner, it is almost certainly the opposite for the stereotypical journalist. I would argue the figure depicted most often is the Woodward and Bernstein-esque hard-hitting male reporter. It’s interesting that while the gender breakdowns are similar in both professions (at least at the post-secondary level), the public perceptions are quite diverse.
The key is keeping these talented women in the industry once they have children. If they’re balancing both work with managing the home as CHO (as noted in a more recent blog posting on Thanks, Augie), they need tools and support to help them not burn out. I think Environics is great at this and others could learn from its example.