Introduction
Women's presence in the marketplace and in the workforce is larger than ever before. Women make up 51.4 percent of the American population (Quinlan 2003) and earn 57.3 percent of all Bachelor's degrees (Catalyst 2004a). Eighty-five percent of women aged 18 and over identify themselves as the principal shopper in the household (Catalyst 2004b). With this changing role of women in the marketplace, advertising messages are increasingly targeted toward women. Advertising agencies, which are in the business of selling products and brands, face the challenge of learning to target this diverse group of women.
While the advertising industry has a comparable representation of men and women throughout (53 percent male averaged across positions- Endicott 2002), women are underrepresented in the creative department in particular, favoring males by a ratio of 2.3 to 1 (Endicott 2002). Furthermore, on average women in an advertising agency make 86 cents for every dollar made by men (Endicott 2002). While there has been much speculation about the underrepresentation of women in creative departments, very little research has developed theory or empirically tested this phenomenon.
Alvesson (1998), in an ethnography of a Swedish advertising agency, found a strong division of labor, where men held all senior and creative positions while women filled a more supportive, service role. She observed that the highly ambiguous and evermore feminized profession of advertising put a strain on identity for men, which caused the gender divide to grow larger as men tried to define creative work through masculinity. Because the advertising industry calls for "intuition and feeling" instead of more traditionally male values, males may experience unease and have the desire to enhance the masculinity of their work in order to support their own self-identity (Alvesson 1998, p. 997).
Ibarra (1992), in a study of the network structure in an advertising agency and its impact on women's advancement, found that while men were able to form friendship, social and business ties with other men, women often formed friendship and social ties with other women and formed business ties with men. This put women at a disadvantage, as men reaped greater network returns through forming more personal relationships with business ties.
In a 1997 AdAge article, Weisberg and Robbs interviewed several female creatives and gave several suggestions for why there are so few. One suggestion was that women choose to leave the creative department in order to spend more time with their families. Another suggestion for women's underrepresentation is that some women felt that all of the great assignments were given to men. Finally, the "boys club" nature of the creative department was also cited as a reason there are so few women creatives (Weisberg and Robbs 1997).
Note: A version of this paper was developed as the literature review to a paper submitted to the AAA Conference on October 5, 2005.