CLOSE-UP: LIVE ISSUE/WOMEN IN ADVERTISING - Has enough been done to help women's careers?

Positive discrimination is not the industry's favoured solution, Jenny Watts finds.

When the 2002 IPA agency census was unveiled last week, it showed that women are still finding the advertising career ladder difficult to climb. Nothing new in that then.

While women continue to comprise nearly 50 per cent of staff, they only represent 10 per cent of chairmen, chief executives and managing directors, and only 16 per cent of art directors and 20 per cent of copywriters.

And the problem remains at grass-roots level too. Of the 26 students on Watford's copywriting and art direction course this year, only three are female.

When Abbott Mead Vickers BBDO's executive creative director, Peter Souter, became the president of D&AD, he made increasing the number of women in creative departments his agenda. Two years later and with the IPA census revealing what it did, it seems, despite his efforts, his words have had little impact.

For this article, we asked a range of industry figures what they have done to make advertising a more attractive career for women.

Their responses show they are addressing the issue with practical steps, such as improved maternity leave and flexible working hours. But these are for the benefit of the whole agency rather than just women , and most say their hiring policy is more concerned with attracting talent rather than positive discrimination towards females.