Stick the kettle on: devaluing women in the work place.

Like many people I watch Facebook videos about women’s inequality, read posts about the gender pay gap and browse news stories when they appear on my news feed. Having access to this information I thought meant I was fully aware of those issues facing the ‘modern woman’. Despite this knowledge I remained ignorant, reading stories about strangers on the internet though informative gave me a certain level of comfortable distance. I was very much aware these things were happening but always presumed they wouldn’t affect my career specifically. Throughout further education I’ve been in classrooms and teams that included more women than men, I’ve been taught by female teachers and studied in Winchester which had an 80% female student body. Each of these things made me naively believe that I was somehow the exception to negative statistics.

My viewpoint on this matter has changed immensely in recent weeks. As part of our university speakers programme, we’ve had several industry professionals in to tell their stories. Some of these inspiring women included: Sally Weavers founder of Craft Media London, Jen Smith co-founder of Craft and Kathryn Ellis planning director at McCann Bristol. Though their presentations weren’t solely related to women in the industry, it was a topic all three women felt necessary to touch upon. This in itself is of interest, with each speaker having been given free reign to discuss what they deemed relevant. Each of these women have contributed in someway to empowering women, both directly and indirectly. Sally and Jen both spoke about issues they had personally faced in the work place, with male colleagues earlier in their careers presuming they would take notes or make the tea and coffee during meetings. They discussed the importance of asserting yourself as a leader in environments such as these, to ensure this behaviour doesn’t follow throughout your career. To some this may feel like a small issue, one I know personally I may have seen as no big deal, but the consequences are very much real. Both speakers noted the

distance it can cause from from co-workers and how it can prevent opinion sharing (hard to have a voice over the sound of a kettle). Seeing these women speak so passionately about how this had devalued them really brought the issue home. The second you give a face to these problems it’s impossible not to empathise, as a young woman hoping to go into a career in advertising, I would hate to think I was some how already at a disadvantage based solely on my gender.

I do like to stay hopeful, the advertising industry is far from the ‘mad men’ style of the 1950s, with so many successful women paving the way for the next generation. Unfortunately, despite the work of these women, those issues you scroll past on your Facebook news-feed remain prominent. I chose deliberately not to fill this post with statistics but instead share a more personal discussion, this post may not alter mindsets but I would insist that if you, like me believed these issues were distant from your own life begin to ask those women in your chosen field how this has impacted them. Sadly most women will have a story such as this to share.