Pay gaps, sexist ads, a culture of silence and fear… as #timeTo, the industry’s answer to #MeToo, gathers momentum, we talk to senior women working in – and trying to change – a profession still notoriously male-dominated... and white
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In 2017, Victoria Brooks, the vice-president of Bloom, a network for women in advertising and communications, had an idea. Aware that there were some subjects its members found difficult to discuss even among supportive peers, she decided to set up what would come to be known as the Booth of Truth at the organisation’s inaugural day-long conference in Clerkenwell, London. Inside this enclosed space, women would be able to write down their experiences of such things as discrimination and sexual harassment, safe in the knowledge that they would be anonymous. These anecdotes would then be used at the end of the day as fodder for a panel discussion and advice session that she and the president of Bloom, Stephanie Matthews, would call Confessions Live.
The first booth (there have since been others) was inflatable, and resembled an igloo. It contained a sofa, a selection of coloured pens, and a box into which the confession cards could be posted. But if this sounds light-hearted the result was precisely the opposite. “It was an outpouring,” says Brooks, whose day job is as an independent strategy consultant to the advertising industry.
Someone once wrote a card saying that any woman who speaks out will never work again
Those white guys are sitting pretty. Enormous salaries, bonuses, stock options, expenses… Why would they rock the boat?”
There are still events where people think I’m the cloakroom assistant
Continue reading...from Advertising | The Guardian http://bit.ly/2Uj3X30
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