Is a ‘new feminist visibility’ emerging in the UK PR industry? Senior women’s discourse and performativity within the neoliberal PR firm

Abstract

Is a 'new feminist visibility' emerging in the UK PR industry? Senior women's discourse and performativity within the neoliberal PR firm Despite persistent gender inequalities, the Public Relations (PR) industry in the UK has historically reflected unease with feminism (Yaxley, 2013; L'Etang, 2015). However, indications of a 'new feminist visibility' raise significant questions. Do these feminist moves reflect a blossoming of feminist practice in the PR industry? Or rather, in an occupation that is strongly intertwined with neoliberalism and promotional culture (Miller and Dinan, 2000; Cronin, 2018), is the PR industry emblematic of a highly individualised 'neoliberal feminism' (Rottenberg, 2014) and a postfeminist sensibility in which 'multiple and contradictory ideas' co-exist? (Gill, 2016: 622). Adopting Edley's (2000) discourse analysis framework, data drawn from interviews with seven senior female practitioners, supported by observational data, was critically explored in relation to literature in gender sociology, cultural studies and feminist literature in PR. While the online presence of women's networks in PR provide evidence of a feminist visibility to address inequalities, the 'subject positions' and 'interpretative repertoires' in the data were characteristic of neoliberal feminist individualism that calls upon women to provide for their own needs and aspirations through 'self help' measures. Further, while sex discrimination in the PR industry featured prominently within the discursive repertoires of some participants, inequalities in everyday agency practice were either left unchallenged in response to client expectations or tackled through individual actions. Contradictory repertoires, including the repudiation of sexism, were indicative of entrepreneurial discourse (Lewis, 2006) and a postfeminist sensibility (Gill et al, 2017). Senior PR women providing client services appear to have limited scope beyond individualised, performative strategies to challenge the structures that perpetuate inequalities in PR and bring about transformative change (Golombisky, 2015). Although findings are limited to a small-scale study, this paper contributes a unique perspective of the intersections between neoliberalism, third wave feminism, postfeminism and performativity within the UK PR industry.

Globalisation, Geopolitics, and Gender in Professional Communication

“…Neoliberal feminist ideas have been detected in numerous Western professional and policy contexts, including in career guides for women (Rottenberg 2018), business women's conferences (Mickey 2019), interviews with senior professional women (Yeomans 2019), policy-making (Berggren 2020) and political speeches (Dangoisse and Perdomo 2020). In contrast, the body of research on neoliberal feminism in East Asia is small but developing (Kim 2019;Peng 2019;Yu 2018).…”

Female Public Relations Professionals’ Perceptions on the Portrayal of the #Metoo Movement in Croatian Media

“…It is not only the female journalists who are facing gendered nature; it is also the female public relations professionals who are confined to the pink ghetto. Women in public relations are still subordinate to patriarchal ways of doing things (Yeomans 2019), and the findings of the EUPRERA "Women in Public Relations" project have shown that "the position of women in public relations has reached its full circle" (Topić et al 2019, 6) since the 1980s when Velvet Ghetto (Cline et al 1986), the first study on women in public relations, was published. In the 1980s, women in public relations were facing work discrimination (the glass ceiling, pay gap, women being confined to technician positions even though they were better educated) and bias (covert discrimination in promotions, chauvinism, stereotypes and decrease in prestige and wages due to feminization of public relations) and this unfavourable position surfaced between 2010 and 2019, with women once again reporting work discrimination (being confined to technician positions, the glass ceiling, pay gap, masculine work culture) and bias (stereotypes about organisational skills, lack of power, stereotypes about communication skills and intersectional discrimination) (Topić et al 2019).…”

Women Influence on The Practical Role of Public Relations in Iskandar Malaysia Region

“…This literature is useful in examining the complex relationship between neoliberalism and feminism, as well as neoliberalism and post feminism, and offers a way to analyze women's discourse. PR practitioners in the UK in the 1970s and 1980s, demonstrated a level of self-confidence and 'hard' self-efficacy in overcoming career barriers such as misogynistic counterparts and gender inequality (Yeomans, 2019;Yaxley, 2013;L'Etang, 2015).…”

“…The stereotypical view of women as 'natural birth communicators' is often defended. While women assert their superior communication, skills compared to their male counterparts, by doing so they 'simplify' communication and other PR skills such as the organization and time management inherent in women's biology, thus potentially placing themselves as limited in other ways (Yeomans, 2019;Fröhlich, 2008). Personal branding may be one of the methods used by women to isolate themselves in the workplace, as the brand gives the impression of a superior woman or prospective employer as a professional woman (Armstead, 2015).…”