
- When it comes to sexual harassment, more than half the women surveyed had experienced sexual harassment at least once.
- The women also responded that there have been at least a few times when they have not received desired assignments or promotions because of discrimination (33%) and that there have been times when they were not included in making decisions that they should have been included in because of discrimination (42%).
- When asked to what extent they feel potentially vulnerable to discrimination at work in the advertising industry, more than half of the respondents said their gender made them feel either somewhat vulnerable (39%) or very vulnerable (15%), higher than any other attribute in the survey.
- Almost two-thirds of respondents either agree somewhat (40%) or agree totally (19%) that there were times when they personally experienced discrimination without recognizing it—only now do they see it was discrimination.
We recently fielded this study as part of a yearlong initiative to learn more about women and diverse professionals’ experience in advertising. Other initiatives include the launch of the "See It and Be It" feature on our website, the Glass Ladder Series with Cindy Gallop, events and salons discussing female and diverse talent in the industry—such as the one we hosted in Cannes with IPA—and additional data to be released during Advertising Week about how women are portrayed in advertising and the impact it has on our society.
- As I mentioned at this year’s Transformation conference, we must start at the top, with each CEO appointing himself or herself the Chief Diversity Officer. Until there’s better representation of gender, ethnicity and sexual orientation in an organization’s upper echelon, awareness and change are going to be harder to come by.
- Take a cue from Kate Stanners at Saatchi & Saatchi, and encourage young women to pursue leadership positions.
- Follow the example of several IPG agencies and begin unconscious bias training, and perhaps implement a blind resume practice to eliminate any gender or ethnicity identifiers from resumes; this will help level set our hiring practices.