The face of public relations is overwhelmingly female.

The public relations industry values communication and organisational skills which are characteristics that are traditionally associated with women. It is not surprising then that the industry is predominantly female and that more and more women are undergoing further education to enhance their career prospects.

It seems that women dominate both the agency and the corporate sides of PR and they have been doing so for quite some time now. Women are behind the title of public relations and seem to be involved in every aspect of the field apart from the top. It is surprising that women still do not manage to reach the top position within the industry as successfully or as fast as their male counterparts.

The ‘aloud’ section of the New York Women in Communications website the feminisation of PR is discussed at where it is written “As I was pondering the shortage of women CEOs in my field (pr), I saw the post by James Chartrand about her experience copywriting under a man’s name. She blogs that, as soon as she became a man, writing jobs came more easily. According to Chartrand,

There was no haggling. There were compliments, there was respect. Clients hired me quickly, and when they received their work, they liked it just as quickly. There were fewer requests for revisions — often none at all.”

I find this alarming in this day and age that such discrimination still exists. Chartrand’s expereince shows how woman are still viewed and  under-valued in comparission to their male collegues even in a female dominated profession

There is much talk about the feminsiation of PR, but it seems that there is still something missing, if we are still unable to reach the top.  It is not enough to blame the issue ‘of raising a family’ in staggering a women’s the climb to the top. This just does not suffice. If an industry is full of women, it seems only logical that its leaders should be female also.

There is much talk about the feminisation of PR, but still it seems, just as James Brown sung in  1966 that “it’s a man’s world …but it wouldn’t be nothing, nothing without a woman or a girl”