77 percent of my classmates are female in my course compared to 89 percent last year. Noticing that raises one question. Is it common for PR to be studied by female rather than male students? If so, why do we experience that men still dominate the higher positions in PR?
[PR is studied by women]
According to Grunig (1993), 80 percent of public relations students are female. 66 percent of PR practitioners are women in 1992, but when it comes to top managerial and counselling positions, it goes down by 37 percent (Farmer and Waugh, 1999).
[Female study preferences]
Before reading some journals about gender issue in PR, I thought that glass-ceiling prevent them to be promoted. My thought is true, however it is not the only reason, “Women prefer skills over management tasks in PR” (Toth and Cline). Even though schools teach both the manager and technician roles equally, women tend not to be career-minded.
[The importance of women in PR]
As a PR practitioner, a woman has an advantage to eliminate any barriers at communication rather than a man. Moreover, PR practitioners have to be diversified as are their stakeholder.
I cannot discuss the issue thoroughly because of limited scope of the assignment, so my aim is to focus on the gender trend that PR is mainly studied by women, but PR manager positions are still men-dominated. Some occupations are dominated by men, but PR job has the potential to break this glass-ceiling. If female PR practitioners put more aggressive effort into being a manager, it would partly contribute to fill gender gap between men and women professionals.
[For more information]
If you are interested in this topic, the following journals are useful to deepen your knowledge.
"The status of the school public relations practitioner"
"Public relations’ Glass Ceilling"
First of all, I think that this problem is not exclusive to PR. Moreover, I agree with you when you say that the way of practice PR is different depending on the gender.
ReplyDeleteJames Grunig in his book Excellence in PR and Communication Management says: "The feminine worldview seem to be a symmetrical worldview and the masculine worldview seem to be asymmetrical. In PR, this means that men who want to practice excellent PR can learn the value of such concepts as interdependence, relationship and equity from women".
Like we saw in class, nowadays the symmetrical model is more important for a company to survive, so I think that maybe this is the time for PR women.
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ReplyDeleteAs to the gender difference in public relations, this issue sounds quite interesting to me. I believe this phenomenon is not only existed in the PR industry, but also in other areas as well. However, to some career-oriented female practitioners, it is disappointed that most of women are in technician roles because women choose not to pursue managerial roles.
ReplyDeleteOn the other hand, I feel sad about that some people are still consider female practitioners should making clients happy or entreating them. This is totally wrong and also humiliated.
As you mentioned, the PR industry is still men-dominated. Though it is probably true, I think female practitioners may try to get rid of the stereotype and believe themselves are skillful. Because I think sometimes the gender difference is come from self-identity.
I am looking forward to the transformation in the image of public relations.
I think that it is very interesting topic to discuss. I agree with Sherry, it is mostly the problem of stereotypes but I think nowadays with all emancipation issues we will change the situation and more women will be on leading and managing positions. However, not only PR women face this problem but other women as well. And we have to do something with it. Maybe it’s our generation who will change it, who knows.
ReplyDeleteAs all you discussed, the high position are now man-dominant, this have been a long history, woman are work force to change it, it seems alternated, but not too much.
ReplyDeleteFor PR, more women studied PR than men did, so it is waste time and money to educate men to be a manager in this kind area. We should give women more chance to do business that they are good at it.
However, it seems like a tendency, employee are more like to employ men, because they are more focus on competition, rights and fairness, they are more powerful. In addition, there are several reasons employee more like to choose men, when a woman were employed, she may get married in the coming years and after she pregnant, company would give Maternity leave, but still pay salary, that is an obvious reason that more women were shut out of door.
To be a mother is that her mistake?!