SWEDEN — One look at the world’s list of chief creative officers and a realization strikes that male creatives heavily outnumbers females. The fight for gender equality in the industry continues to persist as evidenced by its history, gender pay gap and hierarchy.
Today is another battle won as two Swedish women in advertising launch ad-women.com, a global register of female talent linked to the advertising industry– a step towards creating a more equal advertising industry.
Lina Franzon and Johanna Johansson started the initiative in 2016 by launching the Swedish precursor “Kreatörskvinnor.” They received very positive response and requests to scale up the project globally and include more titles. The database has the backing of twenty agencies and 145 individuals to provide the industry with female candidates for any position.
“To us, that has always been an important part of the project, since women always has been a minority amongst the creatives at the agencies we’ve worked at and female CEO’s was something rare as we entered the industry. Today it’s finally beginning to change in Sweden but looking at it from a global perspective, men still dominated the highest paid positions,” shared Franzon.
While research shows a clear correlation between equality and profitability, the gender pay gap in the largest groups Omnicom, WPP, IPG and Havas make for a poor reading. Last year’s figures showed a mean pay gap stretching from 20.4 per cent (IPG) to 30.2 per cent (Omnicom).
While the average pay gap had shrunk from 25.5% to 23.7%, the median gap had increased from 14.6% to 14.9%.
“If our industry keeps up with its excluding culture, women might steer clear deciding this industry is not for them and that would be an incredible loss. Since we know women to be in charge of a majority of the purchase decisions our industry must be able to communicate with and understand them,” said Johansson.
As of today, the register consists out of three hundred women spread all over the world. As the now launch in full, the duo hope for that number to explode. With a list of included titles stretching from full stack developer and content manager to account director and directors just to mention a few any woman with a connection to the advertising industry can join by creating a profile on the site, free of charge of course.
“Our main goal is to highlight female talent in our industry and provide it with new opportunities. While all women in the register aren’t looking for a new placement, their presence might result in a job offer enabling them to put pressure on their employers and renegotiate their salary or position for the better. And one by one they will shrink the depressive pay gap we see today,” added Franzon.
Using the search function is free for registered users and the register searchable after country, experience and title. For those who want to it’s also possible to support initiative with a small sum each month that will be used to improve and develop the tool further.
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About adwomen:
Ad Women is a global register of female talent within the advertising industry; all of it searchable and easily filtered after preferences. The initiative was started in 2016, by the founders Johanna Johansson and Lina Franzon, with the purpose of forever killing the argument ”there are no female creatives” and facilitate for employers to create a more diverse work place. Today, the list of professions searchable on the site has expanded to include all professions with a connection to the advertising industry. Register and search for female talents here.
