Your university or college
Do you passively accept what your university says to you about your course? Or do your experience, your opinions, the views of other students and other sources of information all act on their message to create a specific interpretation that is yours alone?
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Only you can create meaning in light of your own experience. What you tell other people about the university and the course you are on reflects this process of dialogue between what the university says and what you actually experience.
Mini Case Study 8.4
A female public relations manager
To put these findings into context, take the example of a female PR manager with four staff in her team, man- aging a budget of £100,000. She might develop and manage PR campaigns primarily linked to marketing and product launches. These can be particularly high pressure and so when the volume of work gets too much for her team she might ‘muck in’ and help them
with the day-to-day tactical jobs like ringing the media or writing press releases. This doubling up of tasks (plus any family commitments) may prevent her from taking part in informal networking activities (such as drinks after work or sporting activities). She therefore has fewer opportunities to influence or impress senior managers and may find it hard to move up the man- agement hierarchy as a result. As a manager, she might be on the management team alongside marketing, HR, finance and other business functions, but if she is the only woman – and working in an area that is seen to be subordinate to marketing – her opinions might not be valued as much as the other managers and decisions are unlikely to reflect her input.
Based on these patterns, several feminist researchers have created the beginnings of feminist theories of PR.
Hon (1995) provides a comprehensive feminist view of the field and a summary of antecedents (background/history) for, and strategies to improve, women’s position in the profession. Acknowledging the effects of institutional- ised sexism and organisational stereotypes, she argues for change at four levels:
■ society
■ organisation
■ profession
■ individual.
See Table 8.1.
The role of values and attitudes traditionally associated with women in PR practice has also been examined.
Aldoory (1998) studied leadership styles of 10 female prac- titioners and found that they tended to have a personal,
interactive approach to their role, using transformational or interactionalleadership styles, adapting their approach and the language they used according to the situation they were in and aiming to motivate and inspire followers through cooperation and consultation. Grunig et al.
(2000) compared feminist values with PR practice and suggested that inclusivity, respect, caring, cooperation, equity, self-determination and interconnection could en- hance the ethical and effective practice of PR.
However, Fröhlich (2004) points out that this type of pigeonholing may end up being detrimental to female practitioners trying to break into management, where such skills might be seen as disadvantages rather than advantages. Fröhlich and Peters (2007) draw on psycho- logical studies to suggest that in fact differences between men and women’s roles in PR may be a function of preferences for different types of organisational culture.
This, combined with the social barriers to promotion for women (the work–home conflict, for example), results in Table 8.1 Four levels
of change to address women’s position in public relations (source: based on Hon 1995: 65–79)
Societal
■ Raise levels of awareness about sexism
■ Elect women to high government posts
■ Introduce legislation to support working parents
■ Outlaw sexual harassment
■ Ensure affirmative action is effective
■ Ensure equal representation for women in governmental organisations
■ Eradicate sexism in education
■ Break down gender stereotypes
Organisational
■ Establish family- friendly policies
■ Rethink the masculine ethic dominating most organisations
■ Value feminine attributes
■ Make recruitment, hiring and promotion criteria and processes more objective
Professional
■ Devise specific strategies for overcoming the marginalisation of the function
■ Reassess undergraduate education
■ Incorporate women’s perspectives in the curriculum
Individual
■ Monitor behaviour
■ Create a persona of promotability
■ Join professional associations
■ Help other women
■ Become your own boss
Chapter 8 Public relations theories: an overview 163
women choosing not to pursue managerial roles and self- selecting certain task- or work-environments over others.
Wrigley (2002) suggests the concept of negotiated resigna- tion to describe the manner in which women practitioners come to terms with the existence of discrimination in the workplace in a way that enables them to validate both their own position and organisational and professional struc- tures and processes that perpetuate that discrimination.
Processes of selection which favour masculine values worsen the existing imbalance between men and women at managerial level. Fröhlich and Peters (2007) found that the interaction between structural and individual charac- teristics did indeed affect career progressions. Perhaps more importantly, they found that women’s own incor- poration of the ‘PR Bunny’ stereotype into their own self- image and their descriptions of other practitioners was potentially a significant threat to both their own career and the regard for the profession as a whole. However, O’Neil (2003) found that, for those women who do reach senior management level, there were no significant gender differ- ences in organisational influence. This is consistent with the findings of Moss et al. (2004) who studied senior man- agers and found no significant gender differences in work patterns, either in terms of the amount of involvement they had with senior management or the amount of tech-
nical tasks executed as a proportion of the overall role.
They argue that female practitioners in the UK may have surmounted the glass ceiling in terms of the responsibil- ities they take on, but their study did not address other inequities including salary rates, perceived competence or expectations of the managers themselves. These are important areas where research so far is unanimous in its assessment of the relatively disadvantageous situation for women in PR.
Activity 8.3
Women in public relations
Why do you think so many women work in PR? Ask fellow students and any practitioners:
■ What attracted them to the profession?
■ What might make them leave?
■ Where do they see themselves in 5, 10 and 20 years’ time?
■ Do they think being female makes a difference to their career opportunities?
Picture 8.3 An anti-smoking campaign aimed at minority ethnic groups in the UK. PR practitioners are trying to reach an increasingly diverse range of publics.
Diversity in public relations
There are two main diversity-related strands of thought in PR scholarship. The first relates to the increasing variety of audiences that PR practitioners are trying to reach. From this starting point, modifications of the symmetrical com- munication model have been proposed for non-US cul- tures and recognition of the diversity and autonomy of publics has been advocated (e.g. Holtzhausen 2000; Leitch and Neilson 2001). The reality of multicultural audiences has also resulted in calls for greater diversity within the profession, using the logic of ‘requisite variety’ (matching the diversity in audiences with diversity in the practitioner body, in order to communicate effectively). This approach to diversity has been criticised for prioritising the organ- isation’s needs over those of the diverse groups and indi- viduals (e.g. McKie and Munshi 2007; Munshi and McKie 2001). Munshi (1999) argues that the profession needs to acknowledge the benefit of integrating different values, approaches to communication and understandings of the world from a range of groups, because the quality of this input has the potential to change and enrich communica- tions practice in ways that extend beyond simple economic benefit.
Very little research has been conducted on the position of minority groups within the PR profession, an omission that seems incomprehensible given the increasing diversity among both audiences and practitioners. Most research carried out so far has been done in the United States, focusing on ethnic minority practitioners (Kern-Foxworth et al. 1994; Zerbinos and Clanton 1993; Len-Rios 1998).
Findings reveal that while practitioners were generally satisfied with their roles and found them meaningful, they regularly experience overt or covert discrimination.
Barriers to advancement for practitioners of colour included stereotyping, pigeonholing, positive and negative discrimination on the basis of race or colour, and having
a role as ‘the minority representative’. Researchers em- phasised the need to attract more minorities into the profession by increasing the visibility of existing minority practitioners and educating career advisors on PR and the opportunities it offered to minorities. Kern-Foxworth et al. (1994) emphasised that their study was an initial examination of the roles occupied by black practitioners and called for more research into the area. Unfortunately, this call has gone largely unheeded, particularly in the UK. As the range of ethnic groups entering the profession increases, greater understanding of their experiences in the profession, as well as a recognition of the new perspectives that they might bring to communication, would enrich the body of knowledge both in this area as well as in the field of PR as a whole.