- Email: [email protected]
Women in Public Relations: How Gender Influences Practice
Book Reviews / Public Relations Review 27 (2001)
369
Women in Public Relations: How Gender Influences Practice Larissa A. Grunig, Elizabeth Lance Toth, Linda Childers Hon; New York, The Guilford Press, 2001, 424 pp., hardcover, $40 A useful subtitle for this book might also be “How Gender Influences Status,” as this trio of authors has homed in on the second-class citizenship of women in a profession now largely peopled by— guess who?—women. While they provide updated information on the roles women in public relations have assumed, and therefore, how gender has influenced the practice of public relations, the emphasis of the book is on data and anecdotal evidence that show that the status one might expect of practitioners with years of broad and deep experience has somehow eluded most of the women in the profession. Furthermore, their data indicate that young women entering the profession don’t have much to look forward to. Grunig, Toth and Hon have gathered up research from many sources—from governmental, academic, trade association and advocacy groups—to illustrate the obstacles facing working women in general and female public relations practitioners in particular. It’s disheartening to read. As more women have entered public relations, salaries and perks have contracted, with a ripple effect of dissatisfaction that affects women and men, albeit differently. The authors’ own research, from 1995, uncovered a gender-based difference in terms of satisfaction with income and with one’s job in public relations: men remained satisfied with their income but not with their jobs; women remained satisfied with their jobs but not with their income. In other words, being in public relations requires some sort of sacrifice, and it’s usually a measure of a professional’s self-worth. Given that women have become a majority of practitioners, and constitute the majority of graduates of college and university public-relations programs, females are disproportionately affected by these deficits. And while the authors of this book offer suggestions on mitigating these problems, they concede that no quick solution is in sight. One can blame the many misperceptions about public relations for at least some of the difficulties practitioners face. The authors touch on this near the end of the book, but even more discussion of this problem would have been welcome. Public relations means different things to different people and organizations—from hotel managers who see their concierges as being front-line public relations staff, to celebrities, who want their PR people to get them on magazine covers and out of trouble, to corporations, who expect public relations people to protect their reputations and finesse discussion of delicate issues with the press, investors and the public, to the White House, where spokesman Ari Fleischer’s job is to keep his boss above the fray. Executives who hire PR people often believe the practice is as much art as science and usually look for a mix of personal strengths, political skill and acumen in a wide range of communication modalities in those they recruit. But I’ll wager that if you asked 10 of these executives to define public relations, you’d get 10 different answers. These varying perceptions set PR apart from higher education, science, law, government and politics, other professions that Grunig, Toth and Hon examine for patterns of professional development for women. It’s unlikely that “being interested in people” and “having an
370
Book Reviews / Public Relations Review 27 (2001)
outgoing personality”— characteristics I’ve heard any number of executives ascribe to a capable public relations practitioner (appropriate for high-school cheerleaders, too)—are ever considered essential requirements for a position at a university, a research lab, a law firm, a government agency or a Washington think tank. But with the elasticity of the public relations business, and its many facets, almost anyone can define what qualifies a person for a PR position— especially if the person doing the defining is doing the hiring. And there’s the rub. The perception of the public relations dimension as one of schmoozing, smoothing over, buffing organizational image, engaging in gentle persuasion, and putting out fires doesn’t help. Practitioners know that this isn’t the whole story, but it’s puzzling why so many others think it is. And if you are among those who think it is, you’re probably also going to think a woman is ideal for the job. One reason that public relations departments became marginalized in many settings is that when organizations were flattened in the early 1990s in the name of “cost discipline” and “efficiency,” the PR department migrated to other bailiwicks: marketing, law, investor relations. This is what Grunig, Toth and Hon call “encroachment,” and it has effectively terminated the chain of advancement for PR people who lack the credentials held by those in the new bailiwick. The sheer numbers of women already in public relations by then made them the majority of the disenfranchised. Many departed organizational life to start their own consulting businesses; Grunig, Toth and Hon interviewed women who said this was a self-confident, self-affirming step for them. Their male peers, however, confessed that they saw such a move as a step backward and would be less likely to consider it a viable career choice. Combine the perception that the stereotype of women assigns them the personality traits compatible with today’s (mis)perceptions of public relations, and the fact that many public relations operations are headed by people without backgrounds in public relations, and it becomes a little clearer why many women have been stalled in their pursuit of PR careers. The dilemma is compounded by the out-and-out sexism that persists in some venues. Grunig, Toth and Hon enrich much of their narrative with verbatim comments from focus-group participants. One participant, a man, described a client who is the marketing director for a coffee company. He said, “They call her ‘the girl,’ ” and he predicted that because of the masculine bias of the company, “she’s not going to go anywhere.” The authors also examine other forces that affect workplaces everywhere: sexual harassment, balancing work and family, economic downturns, all of which affect career progression. They also discuss diversity at length and assess the impact of diversity programs on public relations career development. They include voluminous salary data which, when controlled for age, experience, education and time in the profession, still show a stubborn strain of discrimination against women. Women in Public Relations is a thorough review of what is understood about patterns of career advancement for American white-collar working women and women in public relations since the 1970s. It should foster renewed efforts among those who believe it’s good business to have women in business. And it should be required reading for those who think that affirmative action took care of it all and that women are doing just fine, thank you.
Book Reviews / Public Relations Review 27 (2001)
371
Sheila J. Gibbons, Vice President Communication Research Associates, Inc., Editor, Media Report to Women, Box 180, Colton’s Point, Md. 20626, USA E-mail address: [email protected] PII: S0363-8111(01)00093-5
Spinning the Web: A Handbook for Public Relations on the Internet Diane F. Witmer; New York, Longman, 2000, 233 pp., $23.00 This book provides insightful discussions and illustrations of how to conduct Webbed public relations. It is timely because the Internet and WWW are emerging as important resources in public relations. How can practitioners best utilize these new communication technologies in their strategic communication? Spinning the Web answers this question. When I first saw “spin” in the title, I was fairly suspicious. That word has questionable connotations to many professionals and educators. However, after reading the first few pages it becomes clear that Witmer has consciously co-opted “spin” to show how the Internet and Web sites can help organizations communicate in an ethical manner. Web sites are persuasive tools for public relations and throughout the book Witmer shows us how to use communication in an electronic environment to advocate for our organization’s positions in the marketplace of ideas. The book is concise, grounded in communication theory, and more importantly, it provides specific examples of Internet successes and failures. Its major strength is that it offers an introduction to Internet basics including computer-mediated communication, Web site design, HTML, Internet literacy, searches, and capabilities and limitations of the Internet for organization-public communication. It is a useful resource for learning all Internet abbreviations. Moreover, it shows various ways the Internet and WWW can enhance organizational communication. Spinning the Web can be used by practitioners who want to plan and evaluate mediated communication. The chapter devoted to research is excellent because it tells how to maximize Internet searches through basic techniques such as Boolean logic and truncation searches. The chapter on planning provides a step by step outline for integrating the Internet into strategic communication. The final chapter discusses some of the Internet’s problems, including privacy issues, spamming, hoaxes, and rumors. Practitioners in any stage of their career can gain valuable insights into the ways to best integrate the Internet into organizational communication efforts. This book can also be used as an accompanying text for undergraduate courses. Many professors are looking for ways to bring discussions of Webbed public relations into the classroom. Witmer’s book would complement the introduction theory course, any public relations writing course, as well as the capstone management class. Public relations educators will no doubt appreciate the clear learning objectives, exercises, chapter summaries, and the useful glossary of terms. The Internet and WWW are tools that practitioners can use to communicate with publics.
369
Women in Public Relations: How Gender Influences Practice Larissa A. Grunig, Elizabeth Lance Toth, Linda Childers Hon; New York, The Guilford Press, 2001, 424 pp., hardcover, $40 A useful subtitle for this book might also be “How Gender Influences Status,” as this trio of authors has homed in on the second-class citizenship of women in a profession now largely peopled by— guess who?—women. While they provide updated information on the roles women in public relations have assumed, and therefore, how gender has influenced the practice of public relations, the emphasis of the book is on data and anecdotal evidence that show that the status one might expect of practitioners with years of broad and deep experience has somehow eluded most of the women in the profession. Furthermore, their data indicate that young women entering the profession don’t have much to look forward to. Grunig, Toth and Hon have gathered up research from many sources—from governmental, academic, trade association and advocacy groups—to illustrate the obstacles facing working women in general and female public relations practitioners in particular. It’s disheartening to read. As more women have entered public relations, salaries and perks have contracted, with a ripple effect of dissatisfaction that affects women and men, albeit differently. The authors’ own research, from 1995, uncovered a gender-based difference in terms of satisfaction with income and with one’s job in public relations: men remained satisfied with their income but not with their jobs; women remained satisfied with their jobs but not with their income. In other words, being in public relations requires some sort of sacrifice, and it’s usually a measure of a professional’s self-worth. Given that women have become a majority of practitioners, and constitute the majority of graduates of college and university public-relations programs, females are disproportionately affected by these deficits. And while the authors of this book offer suggestions on mitigating these problems, they concede that no quick solution is in sight. One can blame the many misperceptions about public relations for at least some of the difficulties practitioners face. The authors touch on this near the end of the book, but even more discussion of this problem would have been welcome. Public relations means different things to different people and organizations—from hotel managers who see their concierges as being front-line public relations staff, to celebrities, who want their PR people to get them on magazine covers and out of trouble, to corporations, who expect public relations people to protect their reputations and finesse discussion of delicate issues with the press, investors and the public, to the White House, where spokesman Ari Fleischer’s job is to keep his boss above the fray. Executives who hire PR people often believe the practice is as much art as science and usually look for a mix of personal strengths, political skill and acumen in a wide range of communication modalities in those they recruit. But I’ll wager that if you asked 10 of these executives to define public relations, you’d get 10 different answers. These varying perceptions set PR apart from higher education, science, law, government and politics, other professions that Grunig, Toth and Hon examine for patterns of professional development for women. It’s unlikely that “being interested in people” and “having an
370
Book Reviews / Public Relations Review 27 (2001)
outgoing personality”— characteristics I’ve heard any number of executives ascribe to a capable public relations practitioner (appropriate for high-school cheerleaders, too)—are ever considered essential requirements for a position at a university, a research lab, a law firm, a government agency or a Washington think tank. But with the elasticity of the public relations business, and its many facets, almost anyone can define what qualifies a person for a PR position— especially if the person doing the defining is doing the hiring. And there’s the rub. The perception of the public relations dimension as one of schmoozing, smoothing over, buffing organizational image, engaging in gentle persuasion, and putting out fires doesn’t help. Practitioners know that this isn’t the whole story, but it’s puzzling why so many others think it is. And if you are among those who think it is, you’re probably also going to think a woman is ideal for the job. One reason that public relations departments became marginalized in many settings is that when organizations were flattened in the early 1990s in the name of “cost discipline” and “efficiency,” the PR department migrated to other bailiwicks: marketing, law, investor relations. This is what Grunig, Toth and Hon call “encroachment,” and it has effectively terminated the chain of advancement for PR people who lack the credentials held by those in the new bailiwick. The sheer numbers of women already in public relations by then made them the majority of the disenfranchised. Many departed organizational life to start their own consulting businesses; Grunig, Toth and Hon interviewed women who said this was a self-confident, self-affirming step for them. Their male peers, however, confessed that they saw such a move as a step backward and would be less likely to consider it a viable career choice. Combine the perception that the stereotype of women assigns them the personality traits compatible with today’s (mis)perceptions of public relations, and the fact that many public relations operations are headed by people without backgrounds in public relations, and it becomes a little clearer why many women have been stalled in their pursuit of PR careers. The dilemma is compounded by the out-and-out sexism that persists in some venues. Grunig, Toth and Hon enrich much of their narrative with verbatim comments from focus-group participants. One participant, a man, described a client who is the marketing director for a coffee company. He said, “They call her ‘the girl,’ ” and he predicted that because of the masculine bias of the company, “she’s not going to go anywhere.” The authors also examine other forces that affect workplaces everywhere: sexual harassment, balancing work and family, economic downturns, all of which affect career progression. They also discuss diversity at length and assess the impact of diversity programs on public relations career development. They include voluminous salary data which, when controlled for age, experience, education and time in the profession, still show a stubborn strain of discrimination against women. Women in Public Relations is a thorough review of what is understood about patterns of career advancement for American white-collar working women and women in public relations since the 1970s. It should foster renewed efforts among those who believe it’s good business to have women in business. And it should be required reading for those who think that affirmative action took care of it all and that women are doing just fine, thank you.
Book Reviews / Public Relations Review 27 (2001)
371
Sheila J. Gibbons, Vice President Communication Research Associates, Inc., Editor, Media Report to Women, Box 180, Colton’s Point, Md. 20626, USA E-mail address: [email protected] PII: S0363-8111(01)00093-5
Spinning the Web: A Handbook for Public Relations on the Internet Diane F. Witmer; New York, Longman, 2000, 233 pp., $23.00 This book provides insightful discussions and illustrations of how to conduct Webbed public relations. It is timely because the Internet and WWW are emerging as important resources in public relations. How can practitioners best utilize these new communication technologies in their strategic communication? Spinning the Web answers this question. When I first saw “spin” in the title, I was fairly suspicious. That word has questionable connotations to many professionals and educators. However, after reading the first few pages it becomes clear that Witmer has consciously co-opted “spin” to show how the Internet and Web sites can help organizations communicate in an ethical manner. Web sites are persuasive tools for public relations and throughout the book Witmer shows us how to use communication in an electronic environment to advocate for our organization’s positions in the marketplace of ideas. The book is concise, grounded in communication theory, and more importantly, it provides specific examples of Internet successes and failures. Its major strength is that it offers an introduction to Internet basics including computer-mediated communication, Web site design, HTML, Internet literacy, searches, and capabilities and limitations of the Internet for organization-public communication. It is a useful resource for learning all Internet abbreviations. Moreover, it shows various ways the Internet and WWW can enhance organizational communication. Spinning the Web can be used by practitioners who want to plan and evaluate mediated communication. The chapter devoted to research is excellent because it tells how to maximize Internet searches through basic techniques such as Boolean logic and truncation searches. The chapter on planning provides a step by step outline for integrating the Internet into strategic communication. The final chapter discusses some of the Internet’s problems, including privacy issues, spamming, hoaxes, and rumors. Practitioners in any stage of their career can gain valuable insights into the ways to best integrate the Internet into organizational communication efforts. This book can also be used as an accompanying text for undergraduate courses. Many professors are looking for ways to bring discussions of Webbed public relations into the classroom. Witmer’s book would complement the introduction theory course, any public relations writing course, as well as the capstone management class. Public relations educators will no doubt appreciate the clear learning objectives, exercises, chapter summaries, and the useful glossary of terms. The Internet and WWW are tools that practitioners can use to communicate with publics.