A chorus of, ironically, highly successful female executives rose to bemoan gender equality in the ad industry’s annual meeting last week.
As recently as the 1980s, there were few women in important roles in agencies. Men were always in the leadership roles, men did the hiring and men were running the agencies. Advertising had to go through a generation of affirmative action programs, discrimination lawsuits, and consciousness-raising to move forward into a new reality.
Women have made many strides since. There is parity representation in account management; they outnumber men in media agencies and in in strategic planning. In the last three months alone six more agencies installed women CEOs. These women will do the hiring and will be the the role models to other women in their organizations over time, in all departments.
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