An open letter to ladies in media
Last month, GroupM’s Venessa Hunt wrote a LinkedIn post on gender equality that became one of the Agency Influencer program’s most popular and shared articles. Here, Mumbrella publishes it for our audience.
Dear ladies of the advertising, media, creative, technology industries,
Last week, the brave Dan Robins from Spotify wrote an article about gender equality and admitted to being part of the problem, but also he put his hand up to be part of the solution (thanks Dan).
In return, I want to ask something of the ladies out there. Please don’t let gender be your reason to give up. Before you get mad, or feel I don’t understand you, hear me out.
A good news story: this year Tropfest managed to get the number of female finalists for their short film festival up from 7% to 50% in one year. How? All they did was take the names off the entries when the judges were viewing them. By removing this source of unconscious bias, they made a huge improvement. I suggest behavioural approaches and nudges like this might work to help us bring out our best selves.
Quick question, is the gender pay gap being attributed to sexism? This article seems to imply this, and I would suggest this is unfounded.
Great article Ness!
‘Ladies’ is a pretty sexist term. Language is important, especially with subject matter like this.
I also found the term ‘ladies’ a little old fashioned and an odd choice for this subject. I’m sure it was completely innocent, but it just strikes the wrong tone.