Women in Public Relations

How Gender Influences Practice

Larissa A. Grunig, Linda Childers Hon, Elizabeth L. Toth

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781135467814
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Negocios y empresa
• Subtopic: Relaciones públicas

Thepast 20 years have seen an influx of women into the practice of public relations, yet gender-based disparities in pay and advancement remain a troubling reality. As the field becomes feminized, moreover, female and male practitioners alike confront the prospect of dwindling salaries and prestige. This landmark book presents a comprehensive examination of the status of women in public relations and proposes concrete ways to achieve greater parity in education and practice. The authors integrate the theoretical literature of public relations and gender with results of a major longitudinal study of women in the field, along with illuminating focus group and interview data. Topics covered include factors contributing to sex discrimination; how public relations stacks up against other professions on gender-related issues; the challenges facing female managers and entrepreneurs; the experiences of ethnic minority professionals; the salary gap; the glass ceiling; and how to foster solutions on individual, organizational, and societal levels.This volume is an essential read for both educators and practitioners in public relations. It can be used as a course text in graduate research seminars, and also as a supplemental text in courses addressing gender issues in PR. It serves as a useful guide for young practitioners entering the profession, and provides critical insights for public relations managers.

Women in Public Relations

Chapter One

The Purpose of This Book

The writing of this book began with a letter in 1989. That year the Public Relations Journal, one of the industry’s premier trade publications, ran an article about female practitioners (Lukovitz, 1989). In those few pages, the man who was then president of the Public Relations Society of America (PRSA), John Paluszek, was quoted as saying that if there were a problem for women in public relations, he was not aware of it. Like many other public relations practitioners, he is now.

And like others who read that brief article, one of the authors of this book wrote a response. The letter began:

Let me add my voice to what I am sure has been a chorus responding to your comments included in the article “Women Practitioners” in last month’s Public Relations Journal. I hope the song we sing will encourage you, as the leader of a leading professional association, to act on the many issues brought up in that article on the feminization of our field.

Act Paluszek did. He established an ad hoc Task Force on Women in Public Relations. That group, forceful within PRSA since its inception, has become an integral part of PRSA’s operations. Now called the Committee on Work, Life, and Gender Issues, it is working both from the top down at the national level and from the grass roots up at chapters throughout the country. In a way, this book chronicles its activities in its first 5 years of existence. In another way, this book goes well beyond a single commission within a single professional association. We hope it speaks to the lives of all women doing public relations.

We begin with the story of PRSA’s Task Force on Women in Public Relations because that group’s mission led in large part to the research that frames this book. Without those surveys and the focus group data that augmented them, we would lack the solid foundation from which to interpret our own life experiences and those of the thousands of other women who practice, teach, and study public relations. Although we, the authors, do not consider ourselves victims of “methidolotry,” we do appreciate the funding that made that research possible.

Statistics, then, tell part of this important story. The rest comes from the words of women throughout the United States who have found opportunity, frustration, discouragement, and success in public relations. You will find few famous women quoted here, however. One might argue that relatively few “big name” women in public relations exist. We do believe that the proportion of women who have achieved fame in public relations does not equal the prominence (or notoriety) of their male colleagues. That’s one of the issues this book addresses.

However, even if the history books and the membership rosters of our professional societies were replete with the names of famous females who head major firms or serve as corporate vice presidents, we would want to go beyond those icons. We want to acknowledge the trials and the triumphs of the legions of women who work without fanfare as editors of employee publications, as account supervisors, as media spokespeople, as directors of community relations, as independent counselors, and as one-person departments “doing it all” in public relations.

Most of the women quoted here remain unnamed to protect both their own privacy and the identity of the organizations that employ them. Although we would like to be able to credit those companies, associations, governmental agencies, and nonprofits that have encouraged the aspirations of their female employees, we would almost by default be exposing the organizations that have discriminated against them.

Blaming the guilty and praising the enlightened is not our intent. Even if we had envisioned developing some sort of guide to the best and worst organizations for women in public relations, we know that would be impossible. Times change. Environments change. Bosses change. And the career plans and abilities of the women themselves who do public relations change. As a result, the list we would provide today might be altered radically in another year.

Perhaps more importantly, we do not presume to judge individual employers or organizations where female practitioners of public relations find themselves working. Instead, we are looking for more generic patterns and practices within organizations that lead to the empowerment of women. Unfortunately, we have uncovered a concomitant set of discriminatory organizational circumstances that should warn even the bravest, most ambitious, and best qualified women in our field.

Knowing, at the same time, that many women in public relations labor in organizations that devalue them—often subtly or inadvertently—we conclude our story of women in public relations with the best guesses we have on how to overcome the sexism that characterizes so many enterprises. When we’re less honest, we call these guesses “recommendations,” “suggestions,” or “solutions.” If anyone really knew how to solve the problem of discrimination in the work place, we are convinced it would have happened already.

You see, throughout the research reported in this book—our studies and those of countless others— we have discovered little overt bias against women in public relations. What we have found is that old habits die hard. Stereotypes persist. Family obligations overwhelm women. Women themselves doubt their own and their sisters’ worth. Socialization undoes the best efforts of enlightened parents of both sexes. Role models for women are few and mentors overworked. Powerlessness begets powerlessness.

If knowledge truly is power, then the information contained here should help. We begin with this look at how one professional association, the PRSA, has begun to approach equity for the growing majority of women in the field. From this historical look at the PRSA Task Force on Women, we conclude this first chapter with a theoretical explanation of what we mean by “women.” More specifically, this chapter ends with a brief review of the literature of sex and gender.

This book, then, integrates the theoretical literature of public relations and gender with the findings of the largest longitudinal study to date on women in the field. Through a series of lengthy interviews and focus groups, it also tells the stories of several dozen women in public relations. Because we have framed our research results in the context of the literature, we believe that our book should prove useful long after the survey, focus group, and interview data are eclipsed by findings of the subsequent studies that we consider inevitable. We began to write against a backdrop of recession in the United States, the wake of the polarizing Anita Hill-Clarence Thomas hearings, and an election characterized as “the year of the woman in politics.” We believe, though, that our theoretical conceptualization helps transcend that historical contextualization.

Research Questions

More specifically, the book addresses the following questions:

• Is public relations more of a “velvet ghetto” for women than are other fields?
• How does gender affect salary in public relations?
• What is the relationship between gender and the glass ceiling?
• What factors contribute to sexual discrimination in public relations?
• How do women experience the fallout of discrimination in public relations?
• How are men in the field affected by discrimination against women?
• What solutions do the literature, the surveys, and the group and individual interviews suggest for overcoming gender bias?

The astute reader notices at this point that we are not asking whether sex discrimination exists in our field. As you will come to see from the exhaustive literature cited in the pages to come, the existence of bias against women has been established in both the professional and the academic journals of public relations. We reiterate much of the literature as a way of pulling it together coherently. We also grounded our own research in this literature to form a solid foundation for empirical study. Our main purpose in the book, though, was to begin moving public relations toward a solution to the problem. We used the “Noah principle” as an analogy: No more prizes for predicting rain; only prizes for building the ark.

Of the myriad concerns surrounding the feminization of public relations, then, we have selected these few key questions carefully. They provide the organizational scheme for the text that follows. They suggest that the book (1) is comparative, (2) goes beyond salary to include a consideration of women’s ascension to the managerial ranks, and (3) concentrates on resolving the problem of sexual discrimination in public relations.

These same dimensions are reflected in the PRSA’s Statement of Equality of Opportunity, which we will discuss at some length later in this chapter. First, however, we offer a snapshot of the background that led to our research and the subsequent publication of this book—among the first that focuses on women in public relations.

A Snapshot of Women in Public Relations

The last 20 years has seen an influx of women into the practice of public relations. By their growing numbers alone, women have created opportunities for themselves beyond what fields traditionally considered “female,” such as nursing and teaching, could have offered. On the other hand, any field suddenly shifting to a female majority—or even experiencing the hint of more women than men—faces the realities of dwindling salary, status, and influence within the organization. These consequences make the story of women in public relations an important one to tell.

This story of the burgeoning number of women in public relations should be understood in the context of the changing makeup of our work force. U.S. Department of Labor statistics for 1997 show that although women account for 58.7% of the U.S. labor force, 65.7% of public relations specialists are women (U.S. Bureau of the Census, 1998). Even in the late 1980s, Lukovitz (1989) put the figure at a majority: 58.6%—a dramatic change from 1970, when only 27% of all practitioners were women. This represents a faster rate of change than in many other fields that are moving from a male majority toward parity.

The work force is predicted to alter even more rapidly over the next decade because of the continuing influx of women and minorities. Studies of women entering other professions—including law, medicine, real estate, banking, and accounting—suggest that gender-based inequities similar to those facing public relations practitioners occur in these fields as well. Within this context, then, this book will dispel two myths about women and their careers. The first fiction is that when women move into a field, it is just a matter of time until they take over and have their way. The second is that the typical woman who aspires to a career in management is much better off today than she was a generation ago. The story will end with the conclusion that women do, indeed, add value to the field of public relations and that solutions to gender bias against them are possible.

The managerial emphasis of this text is especially relevant to any study of gender in public relations. The pattern of professional development over the last decade indicates that employees are shifting from the technician’s role to that of the manager. (Chapter 9 explains the critical difference between these two roles.) This trend has significant gender-based implications. Students or beginning practitioners aspiring to managerial positions need to understand how feminization of the field will affect them, whether they are male or female. Also, women in public relations tend to see themselves in the technical rather than the managerial role to a greater degree than men do. So this book has special importance for the mushrooming enrollment of female students in journalism and communication courses and at the entry-level ranks of public relations practice.

Kosicki and Becker’s (1998) studies of departments of journalism and mass communication place about 11,210 U.S. undergraduates in public relations alone; about 4,000 others are in sequences that combine public relations and advertising. They found the ratio of students in public relations versus the traditional area of news-editorial more than 2-to-1 in favor of public relations and advertising.

More significantly for this story, about 80% of all public relations students in the approximately 200 universities offering communication majors are women (Becker, 1990). Although about half of PRSA’s members are women (Toth & Cline, 1989b), membership in the 6,000-strong Public Relations Student Society of America represents a 10-to-1 female majority (Hunt & Thompson, 1988).

When these students complete their undergraduate education, they may go on to join either the PRSA, with about 19,000 members, or the International Association of Business Communicators (IABC), with only slightly fewer members. Between 50 and 60% of the membership of these two major associations is female. In addition, a practitioner with professional orientation may belong to a specialized organization, such as the National Association of Government Communicators (NAGC), the Council for the Advancement and Support of Education (CASE), or the American Society of Association Executives (ASAE). Some of these professional societies, such as the National School Public Relations Association (NSPRA), may enroll as many as 70% women. Finally, female (and male) practitioners may become members of Women in Communication Inc. (WICI).

These professional associations are not the only groups to be concerned about the impact and treatment of women in public relations. Along with the feminization of the field and of the typical public relations classroom has come increasing interest in how educators can meet the needs of their female and minority students. Three articles in a single Journalism Educator explored the challenges and opportunities these changing demographics present (Becker, 1989; Creedon, 1989a; Kern-Foxworth, 1989c). Together these articles and, subsequently, a series of conference papers suggest that our understanding of public relations must be reconstructed by bringing gender and race fully into the center.

So far, however, the only substantial treatments of women in public relations have been published in trade journals or presented at academic conferences. Few books on public relations contain information about women or women’s issues. Thus students relying on existing texts and coursework in public relations—whether their classes are taught in schools of journalism or departments of communication or mass communication, English, or business—learn little about the relationship between the glass ceiling and their own chances for a satisfying career in public relations.

Men and women alike—undergraduates, graduate students, and practitioners already working in the field—need to realize that the influx of women into public relations affects them all. On the one hand, the growing number of women studying and practicing public relations opens up a professional area once considered a male bastion. The new female majority also offers great potential for a field that some predict will be increasingly responsive to the publics that will make or break the organization over the long haul. It may result in a practice that is more professional, more ethical, and more effective than ever before.

On the other hand, the influx of women into a field traditionally dominated by men influences both the compensation paid in and the prestige of that field. As men become an “endangered species,” the field also risks sublimation to a related discipline. In addition, the feminization of public relations may lead to encroachment on its managerial function by non-public relations people.

A Few Words about “Objectivity”

By limiting our look at women in public relations to these key issues and to the relevant literature of only a few disciplines—primarily public relations, sociology, psychology, business management, and feminist theory—we have managed to limit the book’s length to a manageable number of pages. Readers should be aware of what we have sacrificed in the process. We do not make the claim of being comprehensive. By necessity, we have been selective. We also do not claim to be objective.

The two concepts of selectivity and objectivity require some elaboration—especially given the controversial nature of any writing about women or feminist concerns. We anticipate a healthy skepticism about the ideas, the stances, and even the data we will be presenting here. Any challenge to the status quo is discomforting and may become divisive to a field. Promoting divisiveness, however, is not our intent. Quite the opposite. We are aiming at more inclusivity, wherein public relations as a vital societal function welcomes everyone whose capabilities as a practitioner or as a scholar stand to make a contribution.

Throughout this book—as we acknowledge and come to understand our shared predicament as students, researchers, and practitioners of a field increasingly changing—we will make our theoretical assumptions or presuppositions clear. We recognize that like everyone’s, our ability to reason, to take new information into account, and to arrive at logical determinations is limited by our own frames of reference and, yes, bias. Thus we cannot and do not speak of an “objective” compilation of literature, collection of data, or analysis of findings.

Like the philosophers of science Stephen Jay Gould (1981) and Evelyn Fox Keller (1985), we consider objectivity a mythical norm in science. Gould explained that researchers are so embedded in their surrounding culture that they often fail to identify the assumptions of that culture. We are attempting to identify clearly both our strengths and our limitations—We are three white women whose gender helps explain why we consider our research questions so important yet who acknowledge that through our ignorance of other races and cultures, we may inadvertently distort or even omit issues of equal concern to other ethnicities.

Still, the impossibility of achieving total objectivity is not to say that “anything goes.” Instead, like most scientists, we attempt to compensate for our acknowledged subjectivity. Our three-person team represents a strong integration of both the quantitative and the historical/critical research traditions. Our research design and the steps we have taken to help guard against the bias we freely acknowledge as human beings engaged in the research process are described in the Appendix. We further regard the notion of the external validation inherent in the funding process as important. As a result, we welcomed the oversight provided by the agency that helped fund this study, PRSA’s research Foundation.

We also built safeguard...