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Online Distance Learning ForumTuesday, October 25, 2005Wanted: Women in Marketing and Advertising in the UK
My recent online discussion about gender bias in certain areas of work continues to resonate. After Larry Sumners comments about women in science in the US, advertising executive Neil French has added fuel to the fire in the UK by discussing the position of women in marketing and advertising jobs.. At a recent private dinner, he referred to female advertising executive in very derogatory terms. He also said that women didn’t deserve to make it to the top because of their tendency to 'wimp out and go and suckle something'.
For these type of comments to be made in the year 2005 seems incredible. Yet research shows that although 80 per cent of all purchasing decisions in Britain are made by women, men hold 83 per cent of the creative marketing and advertising jobs. For women in marketing and advertising jobs, the industry in the UK is actually moving backwards. This is not because of a shortage of creative and visionary women. It is simply that the advertising industry remains overwhelmingly male. Rita Clifton is one of only a handful of women in the UK who buck the trend in terms of advertising jobs. She points out that women are generally capable of greater empathy - an important part of advertising, and yet they are still very much sidelined in advertising jobs. Marketing and advertising are fascinating subjects. Years after leaving marketing, I still find myself fascinated by publicity and advertising campaigns. What I find astonishing is that, in this brave new world of online degrees and so-called flexible working, there can still be such a gender bias in the UK advertising industry. I would appreciate some feedback from readers in the US. Source: http://observer.guardian.co.uk/focus/story/0,6903,1598649,00.html
Comments:
I think things would even out significantly if purchasing decisions included purchases of beer (which I don't imagine that they do).
In all seriousness, I'm surprised at how much British men have women make all those decisions. Is there any space for joint decisions in that survey or is it all black and white here?
Good point James. I was so busy getting irate at the inequality in marketing, - specifically advertising, jobs for women that I didn't look up the veracity of the figures. How precisely do they know that women in the UK make 83% of purchasing decisions? I will have to go and find out.
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What I am specifically interested in, though, is what the gender situation is like in terms of marketing and advertising in the US. I know that, in general, you guys work even longer hours than we do. Does this make it even harder for women to rise to the top, in higher level marketing and advertising jobs or any other high-powered positions. I'm not trying to turn anyone off marketing and advertising, by the way. There will always be people who have it in them to make it to the top of their tree in marketing jobs, and there will always be a whole lot of other people who work their way fairly high - and very high up the tree in marketing and advertising jobs. Undertaking something like a marketing mba can assist enormously in the process of gaining high level creative marketing jobs for men and women. If ambition leads that man or woman to want to climb right to the top, that's when seious sacrifices seem necessary. I may not be ambitious, but the best marketing or advertising job in the world could never come before my family. I know that there are many men - and women, who feel the same. << Home Archives
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