Gender Discrepancies in Public Relations

In last week's blog entry, I discussed the illusion of hiring equality in professional sports that is created by the large numbers of minorities employed as players. This week, a similar issue will be the focus, albeit in a less glamorous context than pro sports. I'm going to talk about hiring equality in public relations as it relates to gender, and whether the large numbers of women in the field really amount to gender fairness.

In a 2002 study on gender discrepancies in public relations by Linda Aldoory and Elizabeth Toth, people in the public relations field were interviewed about how they perceived gender equality both at their own places of business and in the field as a whole. The responses were as one might expect: No one thought that their own business engaged in unfair hiring practices, but they mostly acknowledged that they happened elsewhere in public relations. In all cases, though, it was made clear that mere hiring inequality was not the problem; firms employed plenty of women. The gender equality issues lay primarily with promotion and pay.

Just as the upper management positions on professional sports teams are overwhelmingly occupied by whites despite the large number of minorities who suit up for games, the upper spots in a lot of public relations firms are occupied by men while the company projects an overwhelmingly female image by populating its staff with mainly women. And in a bizarrely backwards attempt to be "equal," men are often given more consideration for advancement because, in public relations, they are a "minority." The same reasoning is applied to the equally bizarre pay scale in PR. Since promotions are usually attached to a monetary component, men are making more money to do work that women are capable of because there are less of them. It's inequality masquerading as equality, and it needs to stop.