September 21, 2009

Guest column in Ad Age stirs gender discussion

Advertising professor Karen Mallia recently got the advertising world talking with a guest column in Advertising Age.

Mallia was invited to write a summary version of her ongoing research on women in creative positions in advertising—specifically why so few women reach leadership posts as Creative Directors. 

Thanks to the controversial nature of the topic and the magic of online publication, numerous Ad Age readers responded to the article.  A more detailed report of her research study is slated for publication in an upcoming issue of the journal Advertising & Society Review.

Download the article and all the comments here (pdf)>

Creativity Knows No Gender, but Agency Creative Departments Sure Do

Reprinted from AdAge.com

This year's Advertising Age Women to Watch were asked the question: Why are there so few women creative directors? The answers barely scratched the surface of this complex subject -- one I and several other academic researchers have been investigating for several years. I've interviewed dozens of women on the subject, both highly successful creatives and others who dropped out, detoured or reinvented themselves after spending years building creative careers.

There is no doubt an extraordinarily complex relationship between sex and the creative job, or it wouldn't still be an issue 100 years after women entered the field. Creative women have not enjoyed the level of success that women have found in every other advertising-agency department. The number of women in account management has doubled in the past two decades, resulting in equivalent numbers of men and women. More than half of planning and research employees are women. In media, women outnumber men 3-to-2. Yet, in creative, the ratio of men to women is 2.3 - to - 1.

Research shows that portfolio schools have had a fairly equal gender breakdown in the past few years. Women enter creative departments in numbers equal to men, yet they hold just 18% of creative-director positions -- the logical career progression after seven to 15 years. So what happens?

What's working against women

A convergence of cultural and organizational factors inhibits many women from climbing the creative ladder. First, there's the pervasive masculine culture in agency creative departments. While some women can deal with it, research shows being an "outsider" negatively affects careers -- and creativity. It's an environment particularly hostile to female leadership as well.

Second, while their portfolios may get them their first jobs, a great book alone doesn't get people hired in middle- to upper-level creative jobs. Creative directors show a conscious or unconscious prejudice for hiring people like themselves -- people they want to hang around with. That buddy system often plays a role in giving out plum creative assignments, too. If women get sidelined to tampons and diapers, they're unlikely to build award-show currency that furthers their careers.

Most important, the economic pressures of the past few years have made creative jobs tougher and more competitive for everyone -- with fewer people doing more work, shorter lead times and 24/7 client demands. Combine that with the inherent nature of creative work and the way creative departments function, and work-life balance is almost impossible. Few advertising agencies have embraced policies that foster flex time, job sharing and flexi-place, the very workplace programs proven to enhance women's careers.

Despite all that, women have succeeded in becoming creative directors in advertising agencies. And research has sifted out the traits they share: great creative talent, a competitive nature, resilience and an outgoing personality. They are politically astute, primarily focused on career and/or childless.

Aha, and there we have it: Gender isn't really the issue; motherhood is.

Can't have it all

No matter what your sex, a creative job is highly competitive, an unrelenting mind game that knows no timetable. As the second wave of feminism proved, you can't have it all. So sacrifices are made. For some, that's the agency career. For others, that's children. Years ago, McCann Erickson, New York, Chairman Nina DiSesa directly said, "I wouldn't have this job if I had kids."

Some brilliant women opt out of agencies for freelance and consulting, such as former Wieden & Kennedy Art Director Charlotte Moore and Sally Hogshead, founding creative director/managing director of Crispin Porter & Bogusky's West Coast office, who is self- employed as a consultant. Others, such as Linda Kaplan Thaler, CEO-chief creative officer, Kaplan Thaler Group, and Joyce King Thomas, exec VP-chief creative officer at McCann Erickson, New York, are lucky enough to have househusbands, or husbands whose careers give them more flexibility. Research didn't reveal a single major-league executive creative director who has both children and a husband with an equally demanding job.

A rare few get to job-share, like Ogilvy Toronto's co-executive creative directors, Janet Kestin and Nancy Vonk. They also work in Canada, where generous maternity benefits and flexibility further underscore the huge impact organizational culture and policies can play in helping women succeed. Still others work in smaller advertising markets, leverage individually negotiated flexibility or part-time deals that aren't widespread, start their own agencies, or freelance.

Sex roles are socialized. For creative women with fairly traditional expectations of motherhood, role conflict becomes untenable. They cannot have two 24/7 jobs. Creative work is just too consuming. Those women exit for alternate careers in real estate, academia and other fields.

The sad fact is that promotion and leadership in the creative department coincides with the ticking biological clock. And the creative job is much more difficult to balance with motherhood than any other agency position. Until huge institutional change occurs, women creative directors will remain an endangered species.

Comments from online readers at AdAge.com

Jack Jones/Chicago:
And yet, women (at least White women) still fare extraordinarily better than minorities. Is it really about gender or race - or is it really about the tactics of the ruling White male majority?

Wordchick/San Antonioo:
The solution lies with progressive agencies like my own who 'get' in order to retain talent you have to make allocations for the the lives that we all lead outside agency walls. Case in point, this Creative Director is lucky enough to bring her little ones to work with her.

Joyceleesyd/San Francisco:
The case may have been different in the US but in many parts of the Western world, Asians (Chinese, Korean, Japanese) were the minorities in the industry not too long ago.

Certainly not too many Asian folks at the management ranks yet (in the west), but there are plenty in the mid-senior levels in agency land. It's only a matter of time.

Regarding family-career balance... I have worked under many female directors with families and some have made career sacrifices (though they will never put it that way), while others (from a young female's perspective) worked twice as hard as their male equals so they can run a blue chip account and a household with multiple kids of dependent age. I don't know which I'd be when it's my time to choose, but both groups are equally admirable.

Tjordan/Milwaukee:
I think a lot of people are missing the point. Advertising has become a lot of hip, white guys trying to impress the judges at the award shows...other hip, white guys. Yet over 80% of all purchase decisions are made by women. The consumer is seldom the consideration when the opportunity presents itself to do "edgy, cool work." You win awards...you get promoted. The women who do win, are forced to impress all the hip white guys. We conducted independent tests on some of the top award - winning work. Guess what? It bombed with women. Maybe if we let more women craft the advertising to the REAL judges (women) there would be more female CDs, instead of the "all- dressed in black, too hip for the room, snotty, egotistical" men.

And, yes, I am a guy. yes, I've won at Cannes. But I have come to accept that we need to change our business practices dramatically.

Guys...read a few books. Marketing to Women...The soccer mom myth...Re-render the gender...Mistakes were made. But not by me...The female brain...the 85% niche: marketing to women of color...

Change is on the way....

Katrinalimbaugh/Chicago:

Karen, I applaud you for tackling this subject, one that Teressa Lezzi broached about a year ago in AdAge as well. It's a tough one, very polarizing. And while it's certainly part of the larger diversity debate, it is more so related to the struggle women in many industries face regarding family vs. career. In advertising, it's undoubtedly a more pointed struggle than in other industries. It's been my experience that discussion surrounding the issue is too often limited to a hushed conversation amongst female creatives. (As an aside, I find it telling that, with the exception of some random gender-less screen names, then majority of those attacking this content are men).

I also find the point about Canada very relevant. My agency has offices in both countries, and I envy the lengthy maternity leaves my Canadian counterparts are granted - of course, they seem lengthy to me only in comparison to our painfully short allowance in the United States. At least half of the high-level execs in our Toronto office are female, so I do think there is something there. But unless/until the USA adopts a similar policy, we have to work with what we're given. Which I fear means this trend will only continue. Because unless you truly are not interested in having children, what other choice is there?

Marc/Staten Island:
Agency Creative Departments know gender and AGE!

If you are a male with any grey hair on your head FORGET ABOUT IT!

An what's up with the questions they ask on a job application: are you a male, female, white, black, spanish...

WHAT DOES THIS HAVE TO DO WITH SOMEONE'S CREATIVITY?