In solidarity, forever! Comms Women Initiative Aims to Promote and Celebrate Women and Support Young Scholars

Comms Women is an initiative stemming directly from the EUPRERA (European Public Relations Education and Research Association) network on Women in PR (previously a project which ran between 2018 and 2021) I have been leading since 2018, and the British Academy project on Women in Advertising (2018-2019). I have designed and led research into organisational masculinities in communications industries, starting with the British Academy project on Women in Advertising, and this questionnaire was then also used in the research in the network on women in PR. Research has so far been conducted in England, Spain, Croatia, Georgia, North America, the Czech Republic and Greece.

All findings show that women suffer from organisational masculinities and the fact they do not always fit into masculine, organisational meanings and practices. It seems, based on findings, that mainly women who can join in the masculine organisational culture and become ‘one of the boys’ and embrace what is commonly known as blokeish behaviour succeed and progress to managerial roles.

Other women lag behind and struggle to cope with career expectations and office cultures, the latter sometimes mirroring the 1930s when women first joined offices and were, regardless of their qualifications, reduced to personal assistants and asked to copy something, make coffees, etc.

I published widely on these industry issues, including a book on leadership and women in PR, EUPRERA reports and also articles and chapters. This has benefited my career, but I did not want to just use women for my career benefit, as I was aware many have sacrificed their lunch breaks and free time to speak with me and help with my research.

I launched the Comms Women initiative to promote and celebrate women in comms and comms women’s research and diversity. Women are too often told to change to succeed in their careers, whereas organisations and society need to change! What is more, research (including my own) shows that most women are socialised in a way that does not create skills such as competitiveness and self-promotion, which come naturally to most men. This is largely due to early socialisation and habitus in which we grow up that creates dispositions that do not always find a satisfactory place in the organisational world.

So, I decided to do it for women and to that end, I created reference lists on women in comms research conducted so far, so that other researchers can find it, feel encouraged to conduct further research and also demonstrate that this area of scholarship is well developed and deserves to be seen as a subset of mass communications scholarship. The reference list includes literature on women in PR, advertising and journalism; the three mass communications industries I have been studying for years.  I also created a Comms Women blog where women can write about their work, offer mentoring and tips and where I will also write and promote works by and about comms women to celebrate their achievements, promote them and advocate for women’s diversity because women are not a unique collective. They are very different and deserve to be recognised for all of their diversity. I have published and promoted several women’s blogs already.

It is a genuine grassroots initiative, and anyone can be promoted and participate. Any comms woman regardless of the work she does and individuals of any gender if they do something about Comms Women. Participation in this initiative is free and always will be. In solidarity, forever!

If you would like to contribute to either with references to your work and/or a blog, please email Martina.