It’s August… that time of the year when South Africa turns its lens towards Women and Women at work and I’ve been asked to write a piece about it for my favourite newsletter. Usually, this request would make me roll my eyes hard enough to see my brain (a whole month, gee thanks, Mister!), but this year the topic hasn’t been exclusive to August – has it? The female empowerment and equality agenda has been a hot topic for most of 2016, especially in the advertising industry – from the kinds of work being produced to some awkies executive-level decisions being cast and highly publicised, it seems like the industry is ready for change.
A mere 10 days ago, Adland descended on Durban for the Loeries. The discourse felt a little different to previous years, and it couldn’t just be because it took place in August, right? On the back of Cannes, gender was a hot local topic and I think that’s great. Not because it inspired me to wake up the next day and change everything I do, say and feel, but because the message reached the ears of creatives many (MANY) years younger than me who will be able to use what they’ve been exposed to and use it better than I ever will.
What women like Suhana Gordhan (newly-appointed Loeries Chairperson) and Nunu Ntshingila-Njeke (the first female ever to be inducted into the Loeries Hall of Fame), did over the two nights* was provide a platform for gender discussions. For me, this sounded a bit like, “notice it and change it”. Don’t just wander along making cool shit and one day wake up and wonder where your female peers are.
Rewind a decade (or so) – If you had asked junior-copywriter-Sarah whether she thought gender inequality was an issue in advertising, I think she might have said no. Only as I got a little older (yes, and grumpier) did I begin to notice something was off; why wasn’t I interfacing with as many female creatives anymore? So consider my original question, if you work in the industry or with the industry, consider how many senior female creatives you have ever worked with. As digital specialists, we work with many traditional agencies and I can honestly say that in more than a decade I have sat at a table discussing work with only one senior female creative who didn’t work for Quirk. ONE.
I thought that was crazy weird and perhaps a bit of a unique situation. So, I threw the question out to my wine book club – a collection of amazing creative women – and, bloody hell, it was more of the same. Very few had ever worked under a female Creative Director (in this country) and the ones who’d been super senior before they left their agencies, did so not because they didn’t love what they did, but because how the hell do you hunt for and maintain a CD title and have a family? If we thought the % of female CDs was low, I wonder how horrified we’d be if we looked at the % of mom/CDs. Here’s a damn fine interview with Jenny Glover (someone who knows more about this than I do), that crept into the lively WhatsApp discussion. Read it!
Anyway, from this group of women, almost all have left agency life to freelance and run their own studios, which is great because the world still gets to benefit from their talent, but many young female creatives won’t. And without more female creative leaders and mentors, we won’t breed more female creative leaders (insert vicious cycle here).
Quirk is a little different. More than 50% of our creative leaders are women. Cool, right? But why. Perhaps it’s because digital business only popped up after sexism’s heyday, perhaps it’s that we have a leadership team made up of feminists (many of whom are men) or perhaps it’s just a fluke.
When all is said and done; the work we produce as an industry will be more powerful, effective and relevant when we are all more relevant and representative of the people we produce the work for. Gender, race, sexuality, religion, culture – it takes a beautiful balance of all kinds of humans to make amazing work and, vaginas aside, we all have a long way to go.
*One can only hope that what they heard made some people question if it was still acceptable to follow up words like those with a bevy of daisy-dukes-wearing statuette-carrying beauties or if it was ok to gawk at the nubile bikini-clad nymphs that had been placed on show for our amusement at the official after party.
