Mike Carter

Managing Director

Usually in this section I would give a catch up evaluation of the creative market - however, when we all sat down to review the year we stared at each other and all said at once, “same as last year”.

Now that is a challenge when you are trying to offer insight but in reality, possibly because of the “B” word, things are very similar indeed. Digital is still growing constrained by the availability of talent, print has stopped shrinking and the marketing mix remains largely the same as the year before. Nothing, it appears, has changed significantly. Certainly not enough to change the viewpoint.

So, I decided to lookout another issue which is revealed in our Salary Survey data... gender inequality in the creative industries.

When we examine the data it shows that 67% of our candidates are male, 33% female. Only one woman in every three creatives. Some industries, very pointedly digital, are very male biased but creative has always appeared to me to be more gender neutral and more of a meritocracy, however based on our candidates over the last year this would prove not to be the case.

Our data predominantly comes from candidates between the age of 25 - 34. In total only 19% of our candidates had dependants, and 81% of candidates are single. Often, you hear of people challenging the issue of gender inequality in the workplace with childcare or family related situations linked to females - however from the range of candidates I would be inclined to say that this ‘family’ argument crumbles.

I contested our data by looking elsewhere for similarities in research, which I found. This prompted me to look further into this disparity.

The question is even more fascinating when you look at design courses at university, here 60% of the students are women, however by the time they get to the workplace the percentage has reduced to 30%. So women are studying design, but then not pursuing a career in the industry.

At the end of the journey it is well documented that only 12% of creative directors are women. Whilst these women hold these roles in many of the gold standard agencies, the ratio from university has fallen a staggering 80%.

Going into this next year, whilst we have little influence on these figures, we will certainly be keeping an eye on diversity in the industry, and provoking conversation wherever possible.