Why diversity is still dwindling in Australia
With Australia’s creative agencies still in the grip of a disastrous diversity problem, Clemenger BBDO Melbourne’s Stefanie DiGianvincenzo looks at how we can redress the balance.
It’s a question I get asked more often than you’d think. ‘Why the lack of diversity? How can we help?’ It’s always with the best of intentions, and often, the person asking is already helping – by showing empathy and self-awareness, and thus not being part of the problem.
It’s the people who don’t ask – or more damaging, people who are oblivious the problem – that are driving rare talent out of the industry faster than we can hire them.
Whether it’s an all-white, all-male announcement of a senior leadership team, a club for the industry’s fine gentleman to get together and bond, a female performing near-naked with a bag on her head for agency celebrations or an attack – often anonymous – on groups that foster support and networking for women in the industry, there’s always something.
Well said Stef. But I think what’s sadder than those you call out thinking “their behaviour is without consequence”, is that many of them are great creative thinkers yet they can’t solve the problem that’s in front of them.
All very sad. So let’s get on with what we’re here for: producing outstanding work for our clients; wouldn’t that be something?
Pretty hard to have the opportunity to “produce outstanding work” when you’re in a hostile environment and not promoted past the point of booking meeting rooms
Pretty hard to “produce outstanding work” when the ECD ignores you in reviews, but will buy the exact same idea you had once a white male team presents it.
Pretty hard to “produce outstanding work” when male suits refuse to present your ideas to clients – against CD instructions – because he wants his ‘bro creative friends’ to get their work up instead.
Pretty hard to “produce outstanding work” when the traffic managers and CDs think you’re not right from the brief because you’re too ethnic/too quiet/too female and ‘don’t get the target audience’.
Pretty hard to “produce outstanding work” when you raise these issues, and then some douchebag is like “this isn’t a problem, even though I’ve never experienced it nor have any idea or advice how to handle it. Just make the work right? That’s what I do and my ECDs and everyone else around me supports me. So therefore the problem doesn’t exist.”
A wise person once said:
“When you’re accustomed to privilege, equality feels like oppression.
But it’s not. What you’re feeling is just the discomfort of losing a little bit of your privilege”…
“Can relate.” – the token Muslim guy.
I just wish that we could progress overnight, to an age when equality for all reigns supreme. Then we could focus our attention on the matters that will wipe us out as a species, like climate change, (rather than helping to promote the causes for the big polluters…).