Lecture 5 - Women and PR

’I think there is a glass ceiling, but it’s cracked. In three to five

years, it will shatter.’

That's what Marina Maher, President of Marina Maher Communications in New York says about the PR industry and women.

And I hope she's right.

In today's lecture we talked about women, PR and the feminization of the PR industry. We heard a really lively debate about women and PR that presented some interesting (and invalid) reasons for why women are not as good professionals as men.

The lecture really got me interested in looking at the status of women in the PR industry and like most any other industry women do not dominate.

While PR maybe increasingly seen to be the stronghold of women, it is in fact men who are in power. I found this really great article outlining how hard it is for women to get to the top in PR and how most of the top level positions are still held by men. For example;

"There are no female CEOs in the top 10 PR agencies...Generally, in the ’O’ class (CEOs, COOs and CFOs) women are woefully under represented. Take a look at the structure of the top agencies. At Fleishman-Hillard, men fill the top four slots. After that come the regional presidents. Two out of eight of these are female: ElizabethSolberg in the Midwest and Janise Murph in the Southwest."

So it seems that this notion that women 'rule' in PR is an illusion, and as in any other industry women must still work hard to be treated equally to men and must operate in a male-dominated arena. I hope we do it, and at least in PR women come out on top.

Here is the link to the article:
http://www.brandrepublic.com/News/104741/50-powerful-women-PR---Women-outnumber-men-PR-field-few-top-Just-long-will-glass-ceiling-shatter-Rebecca-Flass-investigates/?DCMP=ILC-BETAMORE