Advice – On Being a Female

By / August 16, 2007 /

I’m a female Copywriter at a local advertising agency. Most of my ideas get shot down internally (by my male colleagues) before the client even has a chance to review them. As a woman, I am all too familiar with the so-called “glass ceiling” for salary and promotions, but I am beginning to think there is another, equally limiting, boundary for women trying to get work in front of a client. What can I do to break through this creative glass ceiling?

Female and frustrated,
– Melanie

Dear Melynie,
Women have been bedeviled by glass ceilings in the work place since they were first installed as a response to complaints that the glass floors allowed men to look up skirts.

Jokes aside, your concerns are not uncommon and I’m here to solve problems, not crack wise. But before I cast the light of clarity upon your confusion, I’d first like to tell a little story about another situation which I feel closely parallels the one that you have described. The story is called, “The Day The White Creative Director Told His Black Art Director That A Design He Did Was A Giant Pile Of Crap And The Art Director Assumed That His Work Wasn’t Approved Because Of His Blackness And Not Because Of His Work’s Suckiness.”

Actually, I don’t really have time to tell that story, which is a shame, because I think it may have helped you understand your situation a little better. Instead, I’ll give you a homework assignment to do in your spare time.

This is a two-step experiment that you can do on any of the creatives you know:

Step One: Pick a creative. Approach them and ask to see some of their older work, maybe from just a few years back. Note their response. They probably won’t tell you how great it is. More likely they’ll hesitantly show it to you while apologetically explaining that it’s not their best work due to circumstance outside of their control.

Step Two: Forget step two! My point is that everyone recognizes problems with the work they produced a few short years ago, but they think the work they’re doing now should have critique immunity. What changed? Nothing really. Their level of talent is probably about the same as it was a few years ago. The big difference? They’ve had time to recognize the shortcomings in their older work—something those around them can usually do the day it’s produced. Something those around YOU can probably do too.

Anyway, I’ll wrap this up since you’re probably reading it while driving. Consider for a moment that your problem has nothing to do with your absence of external genitalia, but rather your absence of talent.

Denver, I’m here to help,

Speedball