I’ve been thinking for the past days about last class, and how women cope with the fact that they are far behind men in terms of salary and they are mainly always in a lower position compared to men in the public relations industry. It is well known that the PR industry is full of working women but always run by men. I would like to analyse why is this is a sexist world, in which men have all the power.
I’ve recently read an article from PR Week written by Stephanie Siegle about maternity and paternity in the public relations industry.
“With such a high percentage of women working in PR, how does the industry fare on maternity and flexible working issues, and is there room for improvement in light of new legislation proposals?”
After reading the article, I’ve realized that maybe this is the reason why women hardly ever reach “the glass ceiling” on the PR industry. Obviously women have the inconvenience of being the gender that has to cope mostly in every industry with the fact that having babies is not always compatible with reaching the top position in their careers, but there should be a legislation that offered some kind of flexibility for women in these cases.
“However, GlaxoSmithKline vice-president of corporate internal comms Elaine MacFarlane points out that flexible working is not always the right option and that there are certain roles that lend themselves better to it than others”.
This issue has been so controversial that the IPR is trying to work out a way of improving maternity policies in order to keep women able to grow in their career without having to decide whether to have family or to keep their career.
My own worries about the issue of feminization of the public relations industry are, if it’s all about maternity being a problem for the industry or it’s as well a problem of men being scared of women doing better or at least achieving the same level of work than men do.
Here you have the link for the article on PR Week, it’s really interesting, and really related to this issue. I hope that you enjoy it.
http://www.prweek.com/uk/search/article/234329//
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