"Am I Putting My Money Where My Mouth Is?" and Other Questions to Ask About Gender Diversity

This week’s conversation is an old conversation: The lack of gender diversity in creative leadership. We’ve all seen the double-page spread featuring 12 chief creative officers, and eight production leaders. All men.

Then: a list of top creatives, a second of top ECDs, a third of top CDs, based on those who had submitted the most work. Just one was a woman.

As Innocean’s Wez Hawes said once Cindy Gallop chimed in, “This is embarrassing for all of us here in Oz. Especially when it's rightly called out and noticed internationally.”

I don’t have all the answers. I’m tired and bored of women having to continually come up with them: in 1984, in 2004, in 2024. 

But I’m a journalist. I have plenty of questions. So if I was working in an agency today, here’s what I’d be asking myself and my leadership:

Bill Bernbach said it best. “A principle is not a principle until it costs you money.” In this case, not having principles is costing you money.

The industry should want a healthy trade industry, so it should financially support high quality publications to ensure their survival.

But you can choose the publications you support. Whether you’re paying, subscribing, clicking, sharing, commenting, sending your releases through, nominating your people for awards, attending events - you’re saying, “I’m happy for my agency to be associated with, and represented by, this outlet.” 

It’s a choice to drag 20 headshots of men onto a spread and go to print.

As Cat McGinn at Unmade said: “It’s a very male-dominated sector of our industry, but equally, if we only show the visibility of the men in the sector … it puts off women seeking out those top creative careers.

“Violence against women is a spectrum. And when you erase women, when you make them invisible from lists of creative leaders, it robs them of power.”

You have alternatives. 

Your CCO is likely a man. Is your ECD a man too? How about your CDs? If you’re not finding a woman until the CD level or below, ask yourself why. Is it just a current issue, or has it always been that way?

We know women are leaving the industry, especially in their mid 30s: 23% of women are likely to leave, jumping up to 28% of women who have taken parental leave in the past five years. 53% would prioritise their next company having more diverse leadership, and 44% would want their next employer to commit to addressing the gender pay gap.

If you don’t have clearly mapped career progression opportunities for women in your creative department, start there. And when you’re next hiring an ECD or CCO, ask yourself whether you could promote someone into that position.

Ask the publication reaching out for a comment who else they’re asking. Nominate a woman in your team if that list isn’t representative, or say no. Same thing for panels. 

If they don’t know the answer yet, tell the journalist your participation is contingent on an equal gender split. 

You don’t want to be one of five men on stage, or one of 20 men on a list.

Not all PR is good PR.

Do the women in your team have profiles as established as their male counterparts’? Are you wheeling them out to press, clients, and colleagues regularly, or only when you need a woman in the pitch room?

Here’s a journo request: If you’re a male CCO, please send me the name of a brilliant female creative in your team who deserves more public recognition, and a few lines on what makes them so great and why you love working with them.

Don’t just be part of the conversation to boost your own profile and PR agenda. Speak up, please. But also do something.

At LBB, we’re working out how best to platform the huge cohort of brilliant women in this industry. More to come on that soon. We don’t need to have all the answers right away. But we do need to start.