Are other women hurting your career?
Posted on Tue, Aug 02, 2011
By Rachel Sullivan
I recently stumbled upon Penelope Trunk’s article: Want To Get Ahead? Stay Away From Women, in which she states, “It’s never good for one’s career to be in a room full of women unless you’re a model or a stripper. Because where there are women there are lower salaries.”
As I looked around an office filled with women, my first thought was “uh-oh.”
Then I started to think this through. Yes, it is a well-known fact that the field of public relations is female-dominated. A 2000 study by the PRSA found that women made up 71 percent of the PR workforce. Some possible reasons for this are that women are more practical than theoretical, women can think about different things at the same time better than men can, and that women are simply better listeners than their male coworkers. So why is it that men in PR tend to hold higher positions and earn higher salaries?
Trunk points out that women choose different career paths than men. She references another article suggesting women don’t choose mentors high enough up on the corporate ladder. Also, instead of choosing a high-responsibility position, women are more likely to choose a more supporting role in order to maintain a work-life balance. Al Lee, PayScale’s director of quantitative analysis, uses data from PayScale to demonstrate to both Trunk and The New York Times, that women do not earn less than men because of gender issues, but because of different career decisions.
Instead of running away from women-filled offices, let’s embrace the fact that women make up the majority of the PR workforce and recognize its benefits. Women, who are more likely to emphasize work-life balance than men, find the means to manage their time better to achieve success. Smarter use of time should be embraced by all of us in PR, regardless of gender. By focusing on goal setting and results -- and NOT antiquated arguments about billable hours or gender-biased productivity -- female-dominated workplaces create nurturing environments in which women can grow their careers and their paychecks, while delivering stellar client service.