Welcome to Playing with Cards

I came across an article posted by The Boston Egotist the other day
called "Your Subconscious is a Real Don Draper." It struck a cord with
me, as I realized someone was finally putting into words what I'd
already thought was true. This thought started a conversation between
T and me. We both felt how difficult it was to be women in the
industry. Seven beers later, we had a blog concept. We want to discuss
how women "play their cards" in the advertising industry to be
successful, from inspiring stories to discouraging ones, articles,
interviews, etc. Welcome to Playing with Cards: A blog about being
female in the advertising industry.

Please enjoy the Egotist article below:

"Your Subconscious is a Real Don Draper"
Early last fall, Felix wrote an editorial about creative directors.
Specifically, he wrote about female creative directors. Or the lack of
them. A discussion arose in the comments section regarding the
likelihood of females to be promoted in the advertising industry –
which is to say, people discussed it not being very likely at all.

Noted in both the editorial and the comments were male admissions of
female colleagues who were smarter or more talented than their Y-
chromosomed counterparts, but bore lesser titles. Several explanations
were offered for this imbalance, including blatant misogyny and family
or lifestyle priorities. One commenter even suggested a trickle-over
effect of female stereotypes in ads infiltrating the agencies that
created them.

Across most industries, women still hold fewer C or VP-level positions
than men – about one to every five, statistically. In advertising –
whose more general ranks are actually dominated by females – that same
ratio is closer to one to fifteen. Families, lifestyle preferences,
misogyny; whatever you want to call it, none of those explanations are
a good reason for that level of discrepancy. It’s just an
embarrassingly ugly flaw on the face of our industry.

By the rulebook, we call this stuff sexism, but the symptoms of that
sexism have clearly evolved beyond the textbook definition.
Unanimously, we agree that grabbing random, unsolicited ass in the
workplace is wrong, and its occurrence today is rare (and fiercely
punishable). But as other industries head towards balance in
leadership, the advertising industry still seems to be patting itself
on the back for adopting the most surface-level tenants of workplace
equality. We adopted an equal-opportunity employment clause. We said
no-no to sexual objectification, at least its blatant or non-branded
version. We became comfortable with our male employees wearing girls’
pants. But did we ever ask ourselves what the actual roots of those
behaviors were? And then work to tackle those? If we haven’t, we might
as well come out and call ourselves misogynists – cause that’s kinda
what those numbers are saying.

Roots aren’t easy to get at, allegorically or otherwise, but a
discussion with a female friend made me think I’d surfaced at least
one. This girl, a high performing twenty-something in a mid-level
position, was discussing the double-edged sword of outperforming
people’s expectations of her in the workplace. On the one hand, she
enjoyed the sensation of catching her male co-workers off guard with
her high aptitude for awesomeness. On the other hand, she felt
uncomfortable that the accolades always seemed to come with a side of
shock, like her ability to excel was unexpected – an emotion that
never seemed to be reproduced when the men in her office experienced
similar success. She wondered out loud whether the bar for her had
been subconsciously set lower than that of her male coworkers – with
whom she shared a job title.

This idea was fascinating to me, and even more so when two other smart
women confirmed similar experiences in their own work environments.
While the “shock” reactions of their co-working counterparts were
effectively harmless, they did hint at an odder phenomenon (and
potentially one of those roots we’re talking about).

In jobs and in life, we typically perform to the level of expectations
set for us by a variety of cultural factors. This is why you often see
correlations between education and income levels, geographic location
and age of marriage, etc. In this same way, a company’s employees
perform to the level of the bar set in front of them. Those three high-
performing gals really didn’t care where the bar had been set for
them, because they were in the habit of setting their own – which a
small portion of the population excels at. But if they had been using
the bar set for them, they may very well have landed under the boys.
The boys sharing the same job title.

It’s a tough question, but one begging the asking: Do you honestly
have the same expectations of the females you work with as you do the
males?

I can’t say that I do. I have no idea why. God knows it’s
unintentional, but to deny that sentiment is hovering there – and that
it may have influenced my actions – would be ignorant.

If I don’t have expectations for women to perform on the same level as
men in advertising – and don’t express those expectations aggressively
through workplace culture and communication – science suggests I could
literally be holding them back. No, I’m not looking at women and
seeing babies and aprons – that would be sexist. But I’m also not
seeing a CD. So what’s the word for that?

I think it’s something like, “one in fifteen higher ups in advertising
are women.”

Think about it. Hack some roots. Let’s fix this.