And this is news?
One of the things I keep noticing as I navigate the murky waters of the PR world (would that make it Waterworld? I hope not.) is that it seems to be dominated by women. I first realized this in college when the classes and the PRSSA chapter I belonged to was something like 75 percent made up of women.
The reason I bring this up is this podcast interview with Sharon Barclay of Blanc & Otis. While her specific focus is on tech PR, the points she makes are also applicable (and applied by her) to the larger industry as well. Her contention – and it’s backed up by some research – is that women gravitate toward PR for a couple of reasons:
1) It’s one of the few areas of practice where women have the potential to join C-level management. The other being Human Resources.
2) Women have more “white matter†in their brains that give them the ability to be better liars or at least make people more comfortable with the stories they spin.
I can see the first one. While we can debate the workplace prejudice that makes this an easily defendable statement till the cows come home, it does seem to be at least as true as any other vague, general statement you could make about one gender’s experience in the entirety of the business world. The second one seems like a pretty cynical way to say something I’ve thought ever since I saw the 10 to 1 female/male ratio in my classes, that women are better communicators. That wasn’t so hard, was it?
Where her argument starts to lose validity is where she says that jocks and less-than-stellar students also are attracted to communications and PR because it’s an easy course of study and doesn’t require much actual talent. Personally I think that’s an affront to all the incredibly bright people I’ve met in this industry. I’m sure she meant to say something a tad different than that but that’s how it came out. I don’t think it needs to be commented on further, so let’s just move on.
I think Barclay is good for questioning why PR is an industry that lends itself to such a un-paucity of women and looking for the reasons that lead to the women to choose PR over other careers. Unfortunately there seems to be too much reliance on stereotyping and too little attention paid to individuals.
[Thanks to Sean for passing this on.]
