Global register of female talent in ad industry launches

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The initiative started in the autumn of 2016 when the two friends and former colleagues launched the Swedish precursor “Kreatörskvinnor”. They received a very positive response and requests to scale up the project globally and include more titles. With the help of a Kickstart campaign, the backing of twenty agencies and 145 individuals, ad-women.com stands ready to provide the industry with female candidates for any position – and women with role models proving that anything is possible.

“To us, that has always been an important part of the project, since women always have been a minority amongst the creatives at the agencies we’ve worked at and female CEO’s was something rare as we entered the industry. Today it’s finally beginning to change in Sweden but looking at it from a global perspective, men still dominated the highest paid positions,” says Lina Franzon.

Mean pay gap

While research shows a clear correlation between equality and profitability the gender pay gap in the largest groups Omnicom, WPP, IPG and Havas make for poor reading. Last year’s figures showed a mean pay gap stretching from 20.4% (IPG) to 30.2% (Omnicom). And as WPP presented their latest gender pay gap report last week they brought some really depressive figures. While the average pay gap had shrunk from 25.5% to 23.7%, the median gap had increased from 14.6% to 14.9%. We can only hope the figures from the rest of the industry giants points in the opposite direction.

“If our industry keeps up with it's excluding culture, women might steer clear deciding this industry is not for them and that would be an incredible loss. Since we know women to be in charge of a majority of the purchase decisions our industry must be able to communicate with and understand them,” says Johanna Johansson.

As of today, the register consists out of three hundred women spread all over the world. As the now launch in full, the duo hopes for that number to explode. With a list of included titles stretching from full stack developer and content manager to account director and directors just to mention a few any woman with a connection to the advertising industry can join by creating a profile on the site, free of charge of course.

Highlighting female talent

Our main goal is to highlight female talent in our industry and provide it with new opportunities. While all women in the register aren’t looking for a new placement, their presence might result in a job offer enabling them to put pressure on their employers and renegotiate their salary or position for the better. And one by one they will shrink the depressive pay gap we see today, says Lina.

Using the search function is free for registered users and the register searchable after country, experience and title. For those who want to its also possible to support the initiative with a small sum each month that will be used to improve and develop the tool further.

Register and search for female talents here.