Are women in PR being exploited?
New research suggests that women who go into the PR industry can go expect a starting salary of $6,000 less than their male counterparts. Industry bodies need to act, argues publicist Elly Michelle Clough.
According to new figures from Graduate Careers Australia, the public relations industry holds the dubious honour of having the highest gender wage disparity of any industry.
Their analysis of the gender wage gap in the Australian graduate labour market showed that female graduates earn an average starting salary of $46,300, compared to the male average of $52,300 – a variance of more than ten per cent. In an industry so dominated by women this is doubly alarming.
I contacted the author of the study, Edwina Lindsey, for clarification around the figure. While she was clear the sample size was not statistically significant – it covered 69 female PR graduates and just 16 male – she suggested that the figure could flag concern for young women in PR, but that further research using a larger sample size would be required.
I remain concerned. 80 per cent of PR graduates are women. The indication that these women may not be valued as highly as their male counterparts reflects extremely poorly on the public relations industry, and echoes similar concerns I have previously flagged across the marketing and communications industry.
I would have thought that these figures would cause concern, even alarm for the
Public Relations Institute of Australia. However in comments published in industry publication Influencing, PRIA’s new CEO Ray Shaw seemed largely unconcerned by the figure.
“Obviously with such a high proportion of women working in PR, it means men can ask for slightly higher salaries, particularly if they’re willing to work outside of the metropolitan centres,” Shaw said.
I strongly disagree with Shaw’s statement. It is in no way obvious to me that male graduates deserve a higher salary simply by virtue of there being fewer men in the industry. And the results of the study do not support his suggestion either.
Nursing and Primary teaching, which are both 90 per cent female at the graduate level, had a gender wage disparity almost half that of the PR industry.
Stuart Gregor of the PR Council expressed shock and dismay when I spoke to him about this report. He was also sceptical about the findings as he felt it didn’t match with his experience in the industry.
I put to him the suggestion that the disparity could be a case of supply and demand and that perhaps men were being offered higher salaries because there are fewer of them. He condemned that notion. “I have 30 staff,” he said. “I pay them based on their ability, male, female or anything in between.”
Further in Ray Shaw’s comments to Influencing he said ‘I have not seen any evidence of wage discrimination in PRIA’s registered consultancies. We definitely
want to ensure that every employee is treated equally and remind businesses of
the legislation supporting employees’ rights.’ I support this comment.
I hope we can trust his sincerity in making it following his earlier comment that it’s obvious that male graduates could seek a higher salary.
This research flags what could be a serious problem for our industry. I would like to see urgent research undertaken to check these results against a larger sample size. I call on the PRIA and the PR Council to work together to undertake this research. This is a pressing issue that our industry bodies need to address swiftly if they are to adequately represent the 80% of female graduates entering the industry.
In researching this article it was hard not to be struck that while looking into gender inequality in an industry that is 80% female, the leaders of our two representative bodies are both men.
If we are accepting significant inequality at the entry level, is it any surprise that this is reflected in the industry’s leadership?
Elly Michelle Clough is the publicist at Belvoir St Theatre in Sydney and tweets as @ellymc
How are women in PR exploited when they take all the jobs. Men can’t get a look in. Trust me, I’ve been trying for 10 years.
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Tom, Men represent 19% of the above sample, which is pretty close to the 20% of graduates who are male and allowing for margin of error, bang on. Clearly, women don’t ‘take all the jobs’. And when men do get the correct proportion of jobs they get paid more. So if your argument is that men are somehow being disadvantaged in the industry do me two favours. 1. Have a good hard look at yourself 2. Cry me a river.
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…that’s some bad PR
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Wow, Ricki. Just 19% of men in PR. That’s some level playing field. And they talk about a glass ceiling for women in business.
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Alex, 80% of PR grads are women. The stats are in line with that. What is not in line is the gender pay gap which is the point of the article. If you’re feeling disadvantaged maybe you should work on your reading comprehension.
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@Ricki – 16 men Vs 69 women. You don’t need to be a maths whizz to see that an equal number of top grads earning top wages in the 16 person sample would skew the results.
I don’t see engineering industry up in arms that men in the industry are being exploited because women earn more (as per this study n= 123 & 24).
Lets have some perspective, with these sample sizes it’s no different to drawing sweeping, industry conclusions off the office survey monkey.
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“She was clear the sample size was not statistically significant – it covered 69 female PR graduates and just 16 male”
Sorry – I call BS on this. Unless you get a proper sample size and are certain that this is happening, there is no reason to go out writing an article that screams INDUSTRY BODIES NEED TO ACT.
This is an industry that is heavily dominated by females all the way through the ranks of seniority. It is largely females who are determining the rates of pay of their new hires. I suspect that if a proper graduate survey was conducted, the results would differ greatly from this quoted survey. After all, with only 16 males in the sample, it would take just one or two outliers to greatly skew the results.
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THIS IS WRONG. PR IS WOMAN’S PROFESSION. I DID MY BA. IN PR AT RMIT (MELB) AND COULD NOT GET INTO THE INDUSTRY! PR. IS A CLASSIC EXAMPLE OF FEMALE PRIVILEGE. WHAT A JOKE! @ TOM – YOU ARE SO ON THE MONEY!
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AC, maybe the engineering industry is discussing this. Just not on the mumbrella blog?
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Agree with Tom.
Mumbrella – you are publishing way too many man bashing stories. Realise it’s symptomatic of the female dominated industry, but please… this story has no statistical cred and is being used unfairly to spread untruths.
90 per cent of PRs are women. You will never get any statistically sound results carrying out a study on this subject, or any other when the industry is so strongly dominated by women.
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I’m wondering whether this might be to do with the types of roles some women graduates may be drawn to. I get the feeling from interviewing male and female PR candidates for in-house roles that women are sometimes more likely to be looking for the promotional or campaign-based PR work, whereas a higher percentage of men are looking for some of the more defensive or issues-management type positions. The hard reality is that one type of PR pays more than the other – they’re different skills and the supply:demand equation is different. If that is the case — and that’s an “if” — it might partly explain the salary gap between men and women. It’s hard to find skilled issues managers, especially at a graduate level, and maybe there aren’t as many women looking for these roles. Or I may be completely wrong.
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The starting salaries overall look to high for someone with zero experience. One year in maybe.
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Different areas of PR pay different staring salaries. Generally starting salaries for graduates are higher in financial / corporate PR than say consumer PR. There are also generally more males in financial / corporate PR . Also an in-house PR role often pays more than an agency role at this level. Irrespective of the sample size if the study doesn’t interview people from same PR sector or environment you are not comparing apples with apples. I suspect the pay gap at grad level is more about this and less about gender.
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It’s because chicks are willing to do it for less. Don’t ask, don’t get. The difference in pay is easily made up by the privilege of saying to their girlfriends “I work in PR” and for them to all gush and tell her how “glamourous” she is…when deep down her role involves following up media releases. I bet Tim doesnt publish this comment.
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I have been running a PR company for 15 years. I have never offered to pay a male candidate more than a female candidate just because he is male. Pay rates are based on skill level and experience NOT on sex.
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No Rebecca they’re not discussing a sample size of 24 on any blog but Mumbrella.
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AC – 80% of PR grads ARE women. That’s not based on the stats above. It’s in Elly’s article. The stats above align with this. Is the sample small…yeah…but they’re telling a story about the gender pay gap and that’s the point being made here.
Its highly amusing how everyone wants to condemn this article based on the low sample sizes being used to support Elly’s concerns, when overwhelmingly, study after study proves that in our society, women get paid less to do the same work as men. By all means keep distracting yourselves from the main point…but the issue isn’t going away. Again you poor, feeling misrepresented, stats-insisting fellas, cry me a river.
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@Mardi mate you’ve got to be trolling or just not very good at taking the up-caps down a case during job interviews.
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Do I have to be the one to point out the irony that in an industry of 80% female grads, in which ‘men can’t get a look in’, the two Chairs of the main industry groups are both men?
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There are a few alternative headlines to this article:
– Why are women not as aggressive when negotiating their pay?
– Is there a disparity of pay in different sectors of the PR industry?
– Should you trust unrepresentative surveys as the basis to make broad sweeping claims?
In my personal experience i have found that men do push harder for more pay for the same job, and from my side of the table i do my best to negotiate a good outcome for my business. All negotiations are likely to end in different outcomes. Would we prefer to work under an award wage system?
I would also like to point out that i attended the panel at mumbrella 360 last year that featured the article’s author. In talking about pay equality Elly said something akin to “I’m more interested in conditions and flexibility than money, and anyway my partner earns enough for me not to need to worry”.
I was gobsmacked we were even having the debate…..
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useless discussion, just employ ability. Women talk more, and that’s PR home base.
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The old men who run PR also want to work with pretty girls – father/daughter dynamic. Women work it to the hilt!
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@bob is a rabbit. ‘glamorous’. You lose, pay up.
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While off the subject, Bob is a rabbit does make a good point that in itself is worthy of a stand-alone story.
Working for a cool brand comes with a price. They generally pay less because people are willing to work for less to say they work for a cool brand. It’s true in 47 er cent of cases. (sample size three, that I can think of).
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@ me – you got me there! Now hurry along and go earn less than me.
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Ricki – Lies, damn lies and statistics.
This article does NOT show a multi-industry gender pay gap for graduates. Only 2 results in the table above are statistically significant so all the other numbers can equally be explained by random chance and therefore must be discarded.
So yes there are articles that support gender pay inequality but this article (and the evidence presented) is not one of them.
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@bob is a rabbit. Question. How can me earn less than me?
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Rob is right – when I started in PR (as a female) many moons ago I negotiated $5k more a year than my female colleague who had more experience than me. When I discovered that I realised that it is a case of asking confidently. She was possibly a better professional than me, certainly more loyal. For the rest of my career I asked for more. If you are right for the role and self confident enough to ask for more money you stand a good chance of getting it. Negotiate women – don’t play victim. My male staff always push for more. Women don’t. I try to encourage them to be better negotiators but at the end of the day its a choice.
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PRIA members remain ahead.
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Pfft, all this stuff about men not getting a look in bollucks. I’m a man and I got my job in PR before I finished my grad diploma.
Mardi & Tom – maybe you’re just not very employable?
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An interesting thing with these figures is that the male side of PR has the highest standard deviation of all groups in this analysis.
A quick back-of-the envelope calculation potentially shows that Male and Female PR workers have roughly the same ‘low’ starting salary range, but there a few very well paid male PR graduates who are pulling up their average.
It’s a problem with having small sample sizes as well. Let’s see how the median figures compare.
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PR really knows how to put a spin on findings based on a sample size too small to be considered by the scientific method. I think it would be a good idea to rewrite this article based on some of the good feedback provided in the comments section. @Doc your reasoning sounds plausible that men and women go after different types of PR, otherwise in a female dominated industry, where many gatekeepers are women, it makes no sense that women would be getting paid less than men.
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I agree with @Doc and @Eda. From my observation the type of PR that attracts men and women is statistically significant in this case.
I have been in the industry for over 10 years and while women dominate the industry, there are key areas of the industry such as financial, corporate, issues, government and politics that attracts more of a male balance. These are also areas that pay at the top end of the pay scale at all levels of the PR profession.
I also teach 3rd year students and I keep banging my head against the wall at seeing my female students, despite all advice to the contrary, who just keep joining fashion and lifestyle agencies who pay peanuts and supplement their 99% female workforce’s income with client freebies and the chance to attend exclusive parties.
I had one girl show me a contract letter that she received from her employer, which stated that on top of her salary of $31,000 – “you will also receive a number of benefits including paid client lunches and opportunities to attend events that we estimate will provide around $10,000 on top of your salary”.
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regardless of the focus of the study, the issues at stake, possible explanations, arguments, counterarguments, ideologies, snide comments… 16 is just not a large enough sample size to form a reasonable conclusion. statistical anomalies at just one or two of those 16 sites will have a large impact on the end result. this would not happen with a sample size of, say, 50 or 70 like most of the other industries quoted.
the author of the study even acknowledges this. surely it isn’t best practice to base your article around the weakest data in the study. maybe an article about the (almost) perfect gender equality between medical practicitioners would have been more legitimate, given the sample size of 67 & 77. probably wouldn’t have received as many clicks, though.
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Another question begs to be asked. Why are we, as females, going after the flash and glamour of fashion and lifestyle industries that pretty much exist to rip us off by paying salaries too low and offering products too low in function and provide an aweful ROI? Is it working for us (all the image, paint, latest trends) or are we working for it (and getting ripped off)?
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@eda – both. And each relates to self-esteem. Or lack thereof. We can blame society, culture, globalisation, but at the end of the day, we have a choice.
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I think you will find that the average female in PR is earning at the potential developed by that persons capability and recognised by the experience and particular skill set of the employing person.
Male employees in PR are also being paid at the level determined by the pre destined organisational pay scale, whether determined by previous experience or the level of education granted and achieved by the aforementioned graduate.
I think its safe to say that, given all of the possible structures, ideas, concepts and measurements of the modern high powered and time poor PR office the pay rates for all PR’s is commensurate with their own opinion of themselves and can easily be assumed to be a fair reflection of what the industry and society as a whole consider relevant and fair.
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More politically driven claptrap. The soviet union tried to bullshit the people that there was such a thing as a level playing field, a truthful news paper, and equal opportunity for all.
In any organisation in the democratic world, there will be one who is paid less or more than another. In any organisation, there will be a few hard workers and load of passengers. If any women feels she is entitled to more wages or salary than another co worker, then let her demand it via her own case.
If the going rate is $20.00 per hour, then there will be, in any company, some workers who get more than that base rate. They usually have extra duties or greater experience or just a hard enough nose to ask for the raise.
If any company can be proven to have paid more because the worker is male, then go for that company with a heat gun.
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Sorry , I meant “If any woman feels”
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@Richard Moss, I don’t think you can compare gender issues to the political propaganda of the soviet union. It implies that the feminist/equalist cause is corrupt.
There’s still a fight to be fought when it comes to the pay gap.
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That’s why I love discussion threads: this is usually where common sense prevails!
The Graduate Careers Australia “stats” have left me with more questions than answers.
If you are keen on thorough insights and in-depth analysis, i.e. accurate reflections of the industry at various levels of seniority (including graduates), please take the time to participate in the State of the Australian PR industry study that is currently been conducted by Curtin University: http://tinyurl.com/stateofpr (and yes, as participant you can request a copy of the findings)
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@Julia, Yes I can and do in this case. I was comparing the two after claiming that the drive behind the argument is “political claptrap.” Thus both fruits become apples.
I am not attempting to lay concrete here, this is an opinion page, and I am of that opinion.
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I’m a male and I’ve been discriminated against in public relations for years. In one interview the owner of the agency even told me they didn’t want to hire a male…in the interview! It was an all women’s agency, and they wanted to keep it that way. The interview was for show. In an industry dominated by women, who also face a very low unemployment rate, I don’t care if the few males make more money. We ALL know from studies that men negotiate their salaries more than women anyway!
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