I emailed Claire Beale, editor of Campaign magazine about the lack of female judges for the recent Campaign Awards in Digital and Outdoor. She replied to me very quickly as follows:
"At a rough count we asked the following women to judge the poster awards:
Stevie Spring, Julie France, Kate Stanners, Annie Rickard, Helen Alexander and Tiger Savage...all couldn't make it...our aim is to have high calibre judges so -- given the lower number of senior women in the business -- we are limited; far from ideal, but definitely not for want of trying (or worrying) about it."
Not sure what you can say about that really. How frustrating it is that the advertising industry is still so male-dominated in an increasingly female world (if the gurus like Tom Peters are to be believed, in the USA, women are responsible for 80%+ of buying decisions). No wonder the ad industry is in trouble. If women are doing all the buying and men doing all the selling there are going to be lots of mismatches in communication, due not least to the fact that men and women *are* different and often don't understand each other terribly well. A balance of both is needed. Time for change.
A few thank yous:
to Claire at Campaign for replying to me so quickly.
to all those who commented publicly or emailed me privately on this topic.
to all the Devas, Busygirls and Mobloggers who also debated this with me. It's been fun ;-)
The ad industry is male dominated because women cannot put in the hours. Any industry that demands long hours will be male dominated. That's what society allows for, and will tolerate. Lovely blog. Stay in touch. That'll give me a very good reason to come back. Often. Warm regards.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the feedback - much appreciated. It's great to know that someone's actually reading this :-) Hope to see you again here soon!
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