Women and PR industry

What makes us men and women?
For this class we first had an exercise aimed at defining male and female specific characteristics: it came out that women tend to be more emotional, more flexible and better communicators, whereas men tend to be more straightforward, assuming better their ideas and requests, but sometimes stubborn and too much focused on their ego. Then, the teacher wanted to make the class realise that these characteristics could be both male and female, but that the society created them as male and female attributes; she also showed us through pictures what image the society had created about women a few decades ago: pretty and glamorous, but quite stupid and dependent on men, reduced to a housewife role.
What I thought about this is that women in a few decades have gained a lot of power and recognition, and this is still improving (even if it’s still slow for some areas).
Concerning the different characteristics between men and women, it is possible that they are all created by the society: indeed, I’ve heard that differentiation between the 2 sexes start at the youngest age: you don’t talk and manipulate the same way a baby girl and a baby boy! However, I don’t think it would be an improvement to have no differentiation at all: I would be for equality with keeping the differences. The problem is when these differences make at work women have mostly the technician roles, while men usually have the highest positions; this is very true for the PR industry, even if women represent the big majority of workers.

Will women run PR industry?
The last point above was the object of a debate in class: some had to defend the motion: “women will always work in PR industry, but will never run it”, while another group had to speak against the motion. I was from the second group, which allowed me to speak according to my real opinion! My argumentation was in 3 parts: the 1st part stated that women have usually better skills required for PR, and therefore having them running PR industry was just a question of time. To support this, I reminded people that for generations women have been known in society for being better communicators than men (it’s also one of Kevin Moloney’s explanations for the fact that there are more women than men working in PR industry –in Rethinking Public Relations: The Spin and the Substance-): so we can say that women usually tend to be more relationship focused, to be more methodical, more deadline oriented, and better listeners. And we know that all these skills are essential for practising PR.
So then the question is: why are there no more women at the top of the industry?
I believe that they have to face a few obstacles for that, which are unfair because women seem more often than men to have the skills required for PR industry. These obstacles are mainly gender discrimination or traditional ways of defining male and female roles in society. But today a lot has been done to fight unfair situations such as inequalities between men and women, especially since the end of World War 2. Now we see for example some women being presidents or leading a country, when this was totally unthinkable a few decades ago (see on the right Michelle Bachelet's photo, first female president of Chile in 2006). So why this wouldn’t happen to PR industry?
Then, I said that in order to have this happening, women need a strong base; and this is actually what is happening: it’s a fact that today women dominate PR industry: according to PRWeek, in 2007 63% of PR practitioners were women, and their number increases every year. So if there are more and more women in the industry, there are more and more chances for them to be at the top of it: I think that this increasing number of women will give them more power to fight obstacles that prevent them from being at the top of PR industry: first they will be able to build a strong base against gender discrimination in the industry, and maybe also help them to organise on a big scale ways of managing both work and family life, so managing their different roles in society. So having more and more women in PR industry will in the future eases their way to the top of the industry.
Finally, our group highlighted that today we already see women running PR practices: there are for example Jilly Forster, CEO of Forster, and Naomi Dector, the Washington based partner of Brunswick PR. And having more and new role models is also just a question of time: we finished our statement by quoting Gruning and al who say in Women in PR – how gender influences practice (2001): “many believed that female practitioners could empower themselves by connecting with other women. One aspect of this empowerment, interviewees mentioned, was mentoring and role modeling other women. Several identified learning from those women who have “gone through the hard knocks”. So the remaining problem today about this experience sharing is that powerful and successful women in PR don’t always want to speak openly about the “knocks” or “barriers” they experienced. But we also believe that as more and more women work in the industry, taboos about women difficulties in the industry will more and more fall apart.

It is justified to be optimistic!
I personally thought that our arguments were stronger than the other group’s, who took examples on a small sample of time, whereas it is obvious to see a real improvement for working women, at least in western developed countries, if we see the trend on a big scale: I think it is totally justified to be optimistic given the long way we’ve already made! Then the debate with the rest of the class was according to me a bit blocked sometimes, as students from various countries had more traditional conceptions on male and female roles: some will say that it’s a cultural difference, but I personally think it’s a question of stage in the country’s civilization. Indeed, I strongly believe that some values are universal (whereas some are only cultural), and that concerning the place of woman in society all countries tend or are willing to have an improvement on the long term… Well, some will probably think I’m too optimistic, but I’m sticking to it and assuming it, as this is what gives me the strength to go ahead.

Sources:
-Michaela O'Brien's 27th February 2008 presentation, University of Westminster
-Moloney, K. Rethinking Public Relations: The Spin and the Substance, 2000
-Gruning and al Women in PR – how gender influences practice, 2001