RANTS OF A mADWOMAN.
Mad Men has become the iconic go-to TV show for those mad about advertising, business life, the 1960s, unbridled smoking and drinking, adultery, the oh-so-smoldering Don Draper.
It's also an inadvertent history lesson about a woman's place in the workplace.
A history that I have lived. Even though I started in advertising in 1972 and Mad Men is taking place in the early 60s, my workplace and my industry mirrored the show. For example: Most of the women at my first agency were secretaries or administrative level; every senior level position was held by a man; no racial diversity; the city's major local ad club and business club did not admit women--in fact, at the business club a woman guest had to use the back door.
In this blog series I'll celebrate what's changed for women place in the advertising workplace. Rant about what hasn't. And orate a bit about what is changing for everyone in the advertising business.
Please add your voice, your experience, your 2 cents.
Comments
Wed, 01/13/2010 - 5:01pm
Can't wait to read this series.
Wed, 01/13/2010 - 6:06pm
I started in the ad/pr agency business in the early 80s with a "class" of account executives in which women outnumbered men. What is glaring to me is that, of the roughly 10 of us that started around the same, one of the men is VP Marketing at a huge international company, one is a Hollywood publicist, who frequently appears on CNN and another got in on the ground floor of an internet start-up that was sold to AOL. So, my experience has been that even when women start in the same place as men, they don't necessarily progress at the same pace.
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