You may have noticed the proliferation of women-owned agencies and solopreneurs. The Spin Sucks Community is full of them. You may not have thought about what has led to that trend and what the future holds.
First, let’s back up: this is not a new trend. For many years, women have voluntarily left their full-time roles at agencies and in-house positions or with a firm shove.
It’s no secret that public relations is one of the rare professions in which women represent the majority of the workforce. (That wasn’t the case before World War II, so, yay, us.) It is also one with a lot of turnover. The only industry with a higher turnover are travel and tourism.
But what is fascinating and infuriating is that despite accounting for 75% of the workforce, women hold only 50% of senior roles. Further, the overall age of women skews very young; we will get to that later.
At the highest levels, only 30% of agency CEOs are women.
There is also the question of compensation. In 2023, a prominent industry survey reported that women make 92 cents for every dollar that a man makes. This wage gap is less than the global gap of 82 cents per dollar across all industries, but….
Why?
And why, as this survey reports, is there a 37% bonus gap between men and women? And why do 24% of men in the industry earn more than $150,000 per year compared to 16% of women?
Surprised? Likely no, if you are a woman with 10+ years of experience.
The Scoop for Women-Owned Anything
Agencies notoriously have a difficult time managing their payroll-to-client ratio, so they hire madly when they win new business.
And then do layoffs when they lose business.
And who’s the first to go? The people with experience, higher titles, and bigger salaries: women.
In an industry where the workforce has an unusually high percentage of women, women in unusually high percentages are also forced to leave, the ones finally making a decent salary and boasting the position and title she has worked on obtaining for years.
The hurdles in surviving acquisitions have also become a way of life. (Business schools should offer courses in it.) Whether your company is doing the acquisition or being acquired, your role and responsibilities may be made redundant. Whatever the case, if the choice is between a man or a woman, the deck is stacked against your survival.
Study after study demonstrates that men are judged on their potential, and women are considered risks in leadership roles. Whether it is for funding or promotion, we face the same bias.
Each year, thousands of smart, enthusiastic women graduate with communications degrees from top universities like USC, Boston University, S.I. Newhouse School of Communications at Syracuse University, etc., and flood the job market, hoping to land a position at one of the top agencies. A degree from a top university, a job at a prestigious agency, and life is grand, right?
Not so fast. Just as you are teed up for the next level of responsibility and salary grade, you may be looking for your next role. The industry is full of revolving doors. Sorry to burst some bubbles, but I am permanently on strike from gaslighting my gender.
Now that we know why women don’t choose to leave their jobs, the next question becomes: Why do women choose to leave?
Well, I have answers.
Burn Out, Harassment, and Lack of Opportunity
With images of Emily in Paris, wearing fashion-forward clothes, and doing hard but (seemingly) important work for big brands, women in PR start off their careers full of confidence, thinking that with enough effort and resilience, they will be very successful. They will get those big promotions and commensurate raises and have their photos on the cover of industry trades under a “30 Under 30” headline or similar.
Because it is difficult for agencies to stay profitable during peaks and valleys, they load their staff employees with accounts—too many accounts.
After years of too many late nights, creating endless presentations, writing joyless RFPs, and constant demands from their bosses and clients, their enthusiasm fades.
And then, just like that, we burn out.
The professional world is full of successful women advising younger women on what they must do to have a successful career. They are advised to never refuse work, to always smile, and to never, ever complain. Are men given the same advice? I think you know the answer.
A senior woman at a well-known global agency told me she was surprised she had managed to hang on. She said, “Nothing I ever did was enough. I brought in a lot of new business, produced spectacular results, was praised, but then told my work wasn’t good enough to warrant a promotion.”
And this is coming from a woman who had somehow survived to tell the tale. So many languish in mid-senior roles, waiting until they give up altogether or are laid off so that the profit margins can be right-sized.
Did she think about leaving? Every night. Living with prolonged stress on whether our job will be the next one to be eliminated or wondering if we will ever get that overdue promotion or salary increase gives us plenty of fuel to imagine more for ourselves.
And then there is harassment.
The Global Women in PR 2023 Index reports that 53% of women in public relations experience harassment.
Much of it is the good old-fashioned kind that young women are all too familiar with: sexual harassment. The subtle and not-so-subtle comments, looks, and invitations from male bosses and clients.
A prominent agency owner and thought leader took the leap to start her own business after chronic unwanted sexual overtures from a male client who ended up in a wrestling match on a work trip and found herself pinned against a wall. When she filed a formal complaint with her boss, he told her, “They are our largest client. Can’t you figure out a way to work with him?”
Buh-bye.
It’s 2024, and only seven states, including the District of Columbia, have mandatory sexual harassment training. To all the other states, do better. Training makes us safer and more productive and minimizes big financial risks for companies. Investing in training is far less expensive and annoying than litigation and judgments.
Other kinds of harassment come in different forms. Some of it is disrespect, microaggressions, having others take credit for your work, and insubordination from male direct reports. (Some men find it demeaning to report to a woman.)
You may be surrounded by women, but make no mistake, you are fully working in a culture of homogenous men. These are the same systematic barriers that are prevalent throughout the vast majority of industry categories but take us by surprise because in communications, the majority of our colleagues are women.
One woman I spoke to for this article (who asked to remain anonymous) with years upon years of experience at multiple big agencies told me:
“Despite the comms world being more female-dominated than ever, there’s still a lot of bias regarding where and how women can succeed, thrive, and advance. We’re still judged based on our marital status, the differing roles we play in our lives, and our ability to succeed in environments and systems that weren’t built for us.”
Control Over Our Work
Many of the women I spoke with for this article told me that another main reason for their decision to leave was to have more control over the projects they worked on. They wanted to do interesting work that was aligned with their interests and values. How many of the world’s largest Oreo stories can you pitch and still think your job is making a difference in the lives of others, especially when obesity and diabetes are the foundation of most of our country’s health problems?
If you are a woman of color, you might (understandably) get tired of being tokenized to work on an account only because of the color of your skin.
Women also want the power to be able to turn down work from clients who are unpleasant or abusive to work with. Before you come at me for using the word “abusive,” we all know the tenor of discourse in this profession. It is unnecessarily harsh and often personal.
If we have little control over the egregious acts (see above), imagine the lack of protection women have when dealing with rude and demeaning clients. “Why can’t you just do your job and get that article published in the Wall Street Journal? Get me better media results, or your job will be on the line. Tell the reporter to change their headline, or we will consider changing our agency.”
The sad truth is that women often get the brunt of bad behavior.
We might be able to handle it, but boy, does it get old.
The Demands of Being a Mother
The motherhood penalty is a well-documented phenomenon. If you are unfamiliar with the concept, it refers to the opportunity and compensation penalty mothers pay beginning with the birth of their first child. Men, by contrast, are rewarded in the workplace for having children. It happens across most industries, and public relations is no exception.
Whoever said we can have it all was early in their career or a man. Once you start having children, you realize that trying to give your best to your job, your children, and yourself is an exercise in complete frustration. Yes, it helps to have a fantastic partner who actively participates in housework, cooking, helping with homework, and myriad other details required to raise healthy children. But that’s not all.
The thinking part, the executive management of organizing and planning our children’s lives, is almost exclusively a mother’s job. We are executive assistants to our progeny. From doctor’s appointments, making sure they are meeting developmental milestones, choosing the right schools, staying on top of what happens in those schools, matching activities with interests, availability, and budgets, helping them develop friendships, organizing playtime, vacation planning, comforting when they are sick—it’s a full-time job. It takes great mental energy and finesse to be a good mother or a good enough mother.
A friend of mine was a producer at ABC News for many years. She worked closely with Barbara Walters. One day, when they were in a cab together, my friend turned to Barbara and told her that she was her role model. Barbara solemnly responded, “You wouldn’t say that if you could talk to my daughter. I have failed to be the mother she needed because I was too focused on my career. Because of that, my daughter has failed to thrive because her foundational beginnings lacked my attention.”
Speaking as someone who worked a tremendous amount during my daughter’s early years, let me tell you, you miss a lot. And when you look back, you realize that you denied yourself experiences that you can never get back. This is, of course, in addition to not being “there” for your children in myriad ways that you can’t begin to identify until it’s too late.
Take Control of Your Own Destiny
It’s next to impossible to have it all: our health, thriving children, and a fulfilling career.
It’s much more possible if we are fully in control of our time. A fantastic example of how this is done is from Missy Voronyak, who opened her own business just this year, Voronyak Consulting. She can specialize in her passion, patient, and physician influencer marketing, spend more time with her family, and take better care of her health. Her clients can access and benefit from her deep expertise without incurring the overhead that would be wrapped into an agency retainer.
Barbara Walters, move over; this woman should be our role model.
The inimitable Gini Dietrich is another role model. Pursuing her mission to uplevel the reputation of public relations, educate practitioners, work with select clients, raise her daughter, and train like the athlete she is shows us exactly what is possible when we bet on ourselves.
We can have it all, after all, but it is not working for someone else.
PR Services: Wake Up or Move Over
Now, let’s discuss the public relations service companies for a hot second: wire services, media monitoring, and media databases. Who runs those companies? Take a wild guess.
We know that tech companies are overwhelmingly founded by men, mostly because of the disparity in funding, but why do they all have to be run by men, too? You would think that when most of your clients are women, you might consider giving more executive leadership roles to women. And no, I am not talking about HR and marketing. I am talking about CEOs, COOs, and CROs.
That is why when I meet a female founder like Ayelet Noff on the eve of announcing a game-changing AI-enhanced tech platform for the industry, I am impressed, excited, and committed to hype her efforts all day long.
Ayelet herself is a one-woman masterclass in the power and possibilities of entrepreneurship. She started her public relations agency, SlicedBrand, much earlier in her career than most women. Her mother advised her to always be financially independent, and she listened closely (yay, Ayelet’s mom).
Her global agency works in a variety of industries that are important to her: companies whose products she believes in and/or those she would use herself.
And read this next part carefully: her agency works with a select number of clients only, ones that they really like (in categories that are personally interesting and meaningful). She’s actually fired clients because they spoke inappropriately to her team members. Hallelujah.
She credits her feeling of financial stability directly with being an entrepreneur. She told me, “If I work for a company, I could be fired at any moment.” Not so, when your destiny is firmly in your own hands.
Fast forward to Ayelet’s latest company, Dazzle, a tech platform that allows public relations practitioners to connect with journalists and effortlessly stay on top of trends.
In an age where journalists are deeply cynical about public relations, tired of being spammed, and public relations practitioners spend much time and frustration pitching them, Ayelet thinks it is time for a radical change. Her vision is to free practitioners up to do what matters most: developing relationships.
By the way, Dazzle is entirely self-funded. Why? So that she can retain her vision without VC interference. Overall, this is a fantastic strategy, considering that VCs give female founders less than 2% of funding. Plus, to state the obvious, her equity remains undiluted.
Women-Owned Biz Is the Future
The trend of more women-owned agencies and solopreneurs will not slow down any time soon, and that’s more than okay.
Women win. Think professional fulfillment, equal (or better) pay, health.
Children win. More time with their mothers and having healthier role models.
Brands win. Clients can access experienced and expert public relations services with less investment.
I salute Ayelet, Gini, Missy, and the thousands of others in this industry who forged their own paths with confidence and purpose.
Is it a risk?
No. The greatest risk is staying put and staying small.
A quote informs my work with women-owned businesses: “I think we become whoever would have saved our younger selves.” Monica Lewinsky
Here’s to a better future for all of us.
