The voices of missing women (and men) in public relations
The Missing Women project describes a culture that exhausts women through pressure to prove their worth and navigate double standards. The conversation lacks male voices despite men holding the majority of senior positions.
Two-thirds of practitioners working in public relations in England and Wales below the level of director are female and a third are male. The situation is reversed in senior roles. 54% are male and 46% are female.
The issue is intersectional and is compounded for under-represented and under-served practitioners, including Black and ethnic minority practitioners, the LGBTQ+ community and those with disabilities.
The PR Population report identified based on data from the 2021 Census and anecdotally through applications to the Socially Mobile programme.
A research team comprising Rana Audah, Isobel Wilson-Cleary, Josie Shepherd, Sarah Waddington, Ben Verinder and myself, has investigated this issue over the last 12 months. The team conducted a huge listening exercise based on a survey and 30 in-depth interviews with women about their barriers to reaching senior roles.
50 years of interventions have failed
The Missing Women project, funded by the CIPR Research Fund, identified a culture within practice that exhausts women through constant pressure to prove their worth, manage impossible expectations and navigate gendered double standards. It impacts not just individual careers but also shapes the entire industry's approach to leadership, value and measures of success.
There isn't a single answer - if there had been, the countless interventions over the past 50 years might have been more successful.
The report sets out cultural, structural and societal issues. Meaningful change requires change in each of these areas: leadership, flexibility, life stage support, behaviour change, and structural and organisational reform.
The early drafts of the report generated noisy discussion and debate among the research team and the women who contributed to it. This conversation has continued this week via blog and LinkedIn posts, events, and discussions in social media communities.
Identifying and labelling an issue is important. It provides a focus for discussion and also enables people to self-identify with the concept or reject it.
The Missing Women debate
“In my early career at a global agency, I worked in a team of 18 peers – six men and 12 women, all highly-skilled and ambitious in our field of corporate publish relations.”
“Two decades later, only two of us from that group now hold top-tier senior leadership positions in global agencies. Both are men. Of the 12 women, several hold mid/senior in-house roles, but most – nine out of 12 – are now independent consultants or running our own micro-agencies.
“This isn’t just a coincidence. It’s a pattern.”
Fausat Arilewola, Verity Cash, Caroline Parnell, Julie Rogers and Kate Waters all identified as missing women. Georgia Broome went further in an insightful post, drawing on the related issue of the gender pay gap.
Activists play an important role as agitators and change agents. The communities are an important means of self-identification and support. The conversations that they lead are uncomfortable, but they are important. This is the primary way in which issues are raised and started to be addressed. Bibi Hilton cited the work of change agents.
The report identified societal and cultural components related to family commitments, well-being, and systems issues related to the workplace as a significant challenge. Kelly Quigley-Hicks describes the potential for women with caring responsibilities to contribute to the workplace when they have a supportive employer willing to adapt.
The challenge of managing family and caring responsibilities, alongside issues related to health and wellbeing, were the most common issues cited by the women interviewed by the research team.
Vicki Marinker describes some of the strategies that women adopt to overcome the issue. These include starting businesses, working independently and freelancing. Nyree Ambarchian described the situation that led to her starting her own agency with Laura Chambers.
None of these options is easy. They all require bravery, and they place the responsibility on women to create solutions.
So, what’s the answer? We’ve already acknowledged that there isn’t a single answer. The solution lies in gathering data and designing cultural, structural and societal interventions. This needs to be followed through with robust reporting and benchmarking. Tara Bell drew a similar conclusion after attending a CIPR Greater London Group discussion about the report.
Missing Men
There’s a notable omission from the responses to the report. Can you spot it? The voices of men are missing. PRmoment publisher Ben Smith is a notable exception , committing to highlighting the work of women and calling on men to be allies.
Georgia Broom wrote, “There’s two sides to the 'Missing Women' coin and the other side has a man’s face on.”
We highlight the lack of men in gender debates within public relations practice as an issue in the limitations section of the research study. A useful build on Missing Women would be challenging men in leadership positions in the public relations industry with its outcomes and recommendations.
Acknowledgements
Thank you to everyone who commented and shared the report, and I apologise to anyone I have omitted. Please tag or message me and I will update this post during the week.