Public Relations

Diversity

Dr Kate Fitch

School of Arts

Lecture objectives

• To ‘unpack’ the concept of diversity and its significance for public relations

• To consider the impact of race and gender on public relations

• To consider the ways in which occupational closure ensures particular conceptualisations of PR

Image: PR Couture

Diversity in PR

• “PR produces discourses that help constitute and sustain the relative positions of different groups in society as well as within the profession itself” (Edwards 2011, p.75).

• PR is an occupation that is “biased towards … a middle-class, white identity” (Edwards, 2014, p. 98).

• This topic therefore examines power and public relations.

Diversity issues in PR

• Bainbridge, J. (2014, Feb 6). Sexuality, gender and racial equality: Why workplace diversity is good for marketing [www.marketingmagazine.co.uk, 2014]. Marketing. http://www.marketingmagazine.co.uk/article/1229614/sexu ality-gender-racial-equality-why-workplace-diversity-good- marketing

• Bhasin, K. (2015, Feb 19) Fashion company tweets about its interns; PR nightmare ensues. Bloomberg. http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-02- 18/fashion-company-tweets-about-its-interns-pr-nightmare- ensues

• Coffee, P. (2014, Feb 7). PR vet plans hunger strike to protest industry’s lack of diversity. Adweek. http://www.adweek.com/prnewser/pr-vet-plans-hunger- strike-to-protest-industrys-lack-of-diversity/85912

PR students @ Murdoch

PR Facebook page

Post-colonial and critical race theories

• PR practitioners’ lives are shaped by workplace, professional, organisational, social contexts in the UK, USA (and countries significantly influenced by their histories). These contexts are influenced by “whiteness.”

• Edwards uses “the term[s] ‘other’ and ‘othering’ to describe individuals and groups who are made to feel different in some way from the social, professional and Western-oriented norm that characterises public relations” (Said, 1995; Byerly, 2007 cited in Edwards 2011, p. 76).

• Whiteness, “is a system of privilege, an orientation that serves as the norm against which all ‘others’ are measured (Edwards 2011, p. 79).

• Edwards privileges social and moral arguments over the business case

Gender: Industry concerns

• Concerns about the dominance of women in the industry: “pink ghetto”; “gangs of women”; “too feminized”; “girls and gay guys” (McIntyre, 2012; Salzman, 2013: Shepherd, 2012)

• “the glass ceiling doesn’t seem to exist” (Turnbull, 2010, 2012)

• “The practice of PR is an inherently feminine activity” and “women have a head start.” (Pearce, 2012)

• “Being female means we think differently to men, work differently to men and are motivated by very different things.” (Moore, 2013).

Feminist PR scholarship

• General consensus is that feminist public relations scholarship is underdeveloped.

• Most research is liberal feminist in its focus on gender inequity in salaries, status & roles with some radical feminist research promoting, for instance, feminine-coded values of cooperation, respect, caring, & intuition.

• Critical: challenges existing assumptions & opens up scholarship beyond the dominant paradigm – leads to different kinds of questions

Gender and power • Gender is a socially constructed identity that allows the

investigation of power and power relations, along with the structural processes that produce gendered discourse, rather than being male or female. (Butler, 1999)

• Public relations scholars need to consider how gender relations play out in everyday interactions, formal organisational processes and governance structures.

• For example, the need for professional recognition results in an exclusionary occupational identity for public relations and contributes to occupational closure. The question of “fit” points to implicit coding in terms of race, class, and gender. (Edwards, 2014)

• Intersectionality: a recognition that exploring concepts such as gender and race may oversimplify issues; such categories intersect and amplify impacts of marginalisation.

Future practitioners should…

• Think of gender and race as processes of constructing social identity rather than extant categories.

• Consider the social impact of public relations activity and use this to inform decision-making.

• Be reflexive: how does public relations activity contribute to organisations holding and not sharing power?

• Pay attention to the ways gendered and racist (even implicit) thinking constrains public relations: share information, mentor men and women, and be proactive about gender and race issues in the workplace.

More research…

• More research is needed into public relations in diverse social contexts. Much of the current work on diversity relates to UK and US contexts.

• More research into race and gender in public relations is needed, although there have been important edited collections in 2013 that explored gender and LGBT perspectives, these tend to relate to Anglo-American industries and contexts.

• How do these understandings of both gender and race diversity and public relations apply to various countries in Asia (including Australia)?

Further reading

• Daymon C., & Demetrious K. (Eds.) (2014). Gender and public relations: Critical perspectives on voice, image and identity. London, UK: Routledge

• Edwards, L. (2014). Power, diversity and public relations. London, UK: Routledge

• Fitch, K. (2016). Feminism and public relations. In J. L’Etang, D. McKie, N. Snow & J. Xifra (Eds.), Routledge Handbook of Critical Public Relations (pp. 54–64). London, UK: Routledge.

• Vardeman-Winter, J., Tindall, N., & Jiang, H. (2013). Intersectionality and publics: How exploring publics’ multiple identities questions basic public relations concepts. Public Relations Inquiry, 2, 279–304.

• Tindall, N., & Waters, R. (Eds.) (2013). Coming out of the closet: Exploring LGBT issues in strategic communication with theory and research. New York, NY: Peter Lang

Questions?