Sexist 'banter' and bad behaviour: the truth about being a woman in advertising

Elisabeth Moss as Peggy Olson in Mad Men. Photo/File.

"Wow! You're just like Peggy!" Was the refrain I got from many when I said that I worked as a copywriter in an ad agency. I never minded being compared to the feisty female Mad Men character, but there were times when I wished that some of her fictional experiences in the 1950s were not so close to my own recent ones.

The lone female creative sitting among a sea of black designer t-shirts and 'man-bants'. This was my life for the decade or so that I worked in advertising.

So I know exactly the warped womb that birthed the 'joke' email sent out by advertising executive Paul Martin on International Women's Day last week, in which he sent out a ranking of his 'top five' female colleagues - based on their looks, natch - to his entire company as a parting gift.

It is perfectly possible, I suppose, that the environment in which Paul had been marinating meant that, on the moment of pressing send on the list of colleagues he'd like to 'f***' and who he would 'use as bait to trap a wild animal who I'd rather f***', he truly thought himself hilarious.

What's tragic is that I don't believe that Paul realised that this email had overstepped the line from banter to requiring a public apology (surely he could make amends on Twitter, at least?). This reflects horribly on Paul, but even worse on the industry itself.

I can't speak for all of the women working in it, but my experience - and that of my female friends industry-wide - is that advertising is one of those unique industries in which the boundaries between the professional and the personal are purposefully broken down and blurred to create an atmosphere that is purportedly more 'sociable' and 'relaxed'.

Tara Button says sexism was rife during her time in advertising.

We congratulated ourselves on not having the stuffy 'corporate' attitude; we were the cool kids, and cool kids don't go running to HR when office banter gets you down, or your boss forces a kiss or asks for sex at a Christmas party.

The message women got (especially in account management) is that if you try to have boundaries, you will not be successful because your job is to turn clients into friends. Go out late, drink with them, get personal, be fun and flirty if necessary.

And to question the banter in the office is to isolate yourself in an industry which runs on relationships – professional suicide, in other words. So, when the whole office partakes in a game of 'which three of your female colleagues you most want to shag?,' it simply goes unquestioned.

The trouble is that the sexism is so out in the open and accepted that it's harder to fight. When your boss's nickname is 'the sex pest' and everyone laughs about it, what do you do when that man corners you and asks if 'power turns you on?'. This happened to a friend of mine as a graduate - and it's certainly not hard to believe.

There's a common refrain that 'someone call HR,' but as ever, it is merely a joke bandied around, usually at the expense of women, rather than something you actually do.

As in many industries when the power balance is skewed, inappropriate sexual behaviour is rife, but this wasn't by any means the only challenge I came up against as a female creative.

I was told on several occasions that I was being given a job or opportunity because I was a woman, and they didn't have any other women creatives. 'Great, I'll be sure to thank my breasts later,' I thought. Those kinds of comments only serve to make you question your value.

When it comes to role models, there are a pitiful number of women in senior positions. Only 12 per cent of the UK's creative directors are female, and if all the hoops your creative ideas have to jump through are held by men, it naturally leads to a skewed output.

And this is the final shame, that the end result is that too many of the ads themselves are a reflection of the distorted world of ad agencies, where women are sexual objects, men are the ones with the power and punchlines, and women over child-rearing age are best unseen. It's a mindset as tired as the ads these chauvinists produce.

Tara Button is the author of A Life Less Throwaway.

- The Telegraph