Recently, we noted that a proposed class action sex discrimination lawsuit filed against Publicis Groupe's MSLGroup PR unit alleged that 70 percent of Publicis' 45,000 PR executives worldwide are women, but females occupy only 15 percent of the "leadership" positions.
The suit also claims MSLGroup president president Jim Tsokanos took his younger female employees for drinks a bit too often, and that he allegedly said some boorish things in the office.
So we asked you to tell us what it's like working in the PR business in terms of sex discrimination on the job.
Go directly to the stories you told us >
We got a few responses, and then Colleen DeCourcy, the CEO of digital media agency Socialistic, outed herself as the author of a jaw dropping "confession" column in Digiday where she described an encounter with a male colleague who told her, “I like that necklace, I could choke you with it while I fuck you from behind,” and then tried to laugh it off as a joke.
That story got a lot of attention, and widened the debate to the agency business as a whole, on both the media and PR sides.
What follows are your stories, told to us anonymously in email or in our comments sections, unedited.
They come from both men and women. They all have one thing in common: Because agencies often have a disproportionate number of young women as employees—and because drinking is often part of the business—it can create a combustible mix with no clear line between sex, sexual harassment, and sex discrimination.
"Sex between the [bosses] and lower level staffers is common."
YES, I have experienced it myself. At two of the four agencies I've worked at, both brand names. It's RAMPANT. Sex between the corner office "swinging dicks" and lower level staffers is common and it contributes to the high turnover in the field.
Just my two sense having worked in the agency world for 5 or so years.
"A combustible mix of young women ... and, generally, lots more booze than you see in a lot of other professional environments."
I've raised the question of harassment with a lot of my co-workers, and I'm not sure I've ever had a colleague that can claim *not* to have been subject to behavior that was, if not actual harassment, certainly questionable.
As a rule, though, I hear stories about this being client-driven (as opposed to supervisor-underling within an actual agency).
There are probably structural reasons for that. It's a perfect storm of blurry lines: you have a combustible mix of young women who are attractive, personable, or both, a relationship in which there is an explicit imbalance (client-agency), older, more powerful men, unclear lines about what is and is not OK in terms of personal relationships (inter-office relationships tend to be explicitly regulated by HR, but the rules around clients -- especially guys who are not the day to day agency contact -- is not explicit), and, generally, lots more booze than you see in a lot of other professional environments.
"The women who *do* make it seem to be disproportionately childless."
The pregnancy thing is big here. I'm not sure it's different from any other high-powered job (lawyer, exec, etc.), but not only is there a sex imbalance as you go up the corporate ladder, there is a huge maternal wall issue.
The women who *do* make it seem to be disproportionately childless (the men: not so much). I suspect the explicit hierarchy of agency life has something to do with it ... take time off, and you fall out of the lock-step promotional patterns. In fact, I'd be curious as heck as to whether there has ever been research showing any disparity between in-house folks and agency folks. My hypothesis would be that there are a lot more successful women in house than in agencies.
See the rest of the story at Business Insider
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