'Comms industry should lead the way in promoting female leadership'

The third edition of e4m PR and Corp Comm Women Achievers Summit and Awards 2022 was witness to a virtual keynote address by Sarah Pinch, Managing Director of Pinch Communications. She spoke to the audience about women in leadership roles in the communications industry, how women’s domination of the industry and being in top roles still have an imbalance and how networking can benefit them.

She explores statistics around women in leadership roles and says, “Some research done by the Chartered Institute of public relations show that actually at the manager level within the industry, it's pretty equal numbers of men and women. But once we get up to heads of department or associate directors, that starts to fall away with only 20% women versus the rest of men. And then when we get into directors and managing partners, we are looking at between 75% men and 25% women.”

Pinch also talks about how people use a completely different language when it comes to women in leadership roles. “We have done quite a lot of research into what it feels like to be a woman working in leadership positions, not just within communications, but within construction, law, within health, right across sectors, and we know that it is different for women.

"We know that there is as Hillary Clinton describes it, an entirely different lexicon that is used to describe what it's like to be a woman and what it's like to be a leader. Events like you are attending today are exceptionally important for women to build networks, for men to be very strong allies with women and for the communications industry, which is female-dominated, to really lead the way in promoting our women and supporting our women and encouraging our women to be in those leadership positions.”

Pinch mentions the impact of the pandemic on working women and that it has been harder on them than men. “There’s an emerging conversation in the public relations industry in Great Britain about the impact of the pandemic, on our mental health, and how we can support each other through the post-pandemic phase. We know that the pandemic has hit women much, much harder than men. And so how do we ensure that that doesn't have an additional impact on how women are able to contribute to corporate communications and marketing, and public relations? It's very, very important that they don't fall off.”

She ends her address with her thoughts on networking and the importance of events like the PR and Corp Comm Women Achievers Summit. “I can see by my view of the room that there are many conversations going on and many connections being made or perhaps being made for the first time. I think that is very, very important. I think for those of us that do end up in leadership positions as women and indeed male allies, it is very important for us to continue to talk about these conversations.”