B2B Marketing’s Tequia Burt chats with the association CEO about its recent surveys exploring discrimination in the ad industry. One startling stat was that more than 50% of women in the ad industry have experienced sexual harassment at least once.
Q: To be clear, you think there’s still a problem with gender and racial discrimination and harassment in the advertising industry?
Hill: Yes. And that’s evidenced by our study. And to be honest with you, Tequia, these numbers were better than what I expected.
Q: What can we in the industry do to start to change some of this?
Hill: We have to create environments where it’s safe to call people out when this kind of behavior happens – and that culture has to be set from the top. I think until we crack the code at getting more women and more people of color and more people that represent a wider swath of society in the C-suite, it’s going to be tough to crack this. And I think we have to just keep pushing to make sure that agencies are representative of what society looks like.
Q: How do we make that happen?
Hill: Well, you can do things like blind resumes, meaning you get a resume with somebody’s experience and background but the name has been omitted. You have no idea what gender; you have no idea what race or ethnicity. Study after study proves that when blind resumes are submitted, that they’re much more likely to get through than if a woman’s name and the person happens to be a male with some unconscious bias. I think we also have to start thinking about how we can foster the growth and nurturing of talent as it’s coming up through the agencies.
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