Changes in PR, The Women Affected

As we saw from the last post, there are a variety of social media organisations targeted at Women getting into the PR field. This shows how the increase in the popularity of social networking sites are bringing in other lines of work that are direct at Women. Does this mean that Social Networks are the cause of this change?

The changes in PR.

What do we really mean by ‘changing’? PR is not changing in a traditional sense. It still needs to communicate with their audience and manage relationships with them which is something that will never change.

The change is actually in the different organisations that are coming into PR. Originally PR had three simple components; the Message, the Medium and the Mass. However now you have people interacting with others coming from all different directions. It is still just the same as having two way conversations, only with a lot more communicating. Now, the Medium is used to listen instead of being used purely for communication. The audience have the ability to voice their own opinions, meaning it gives greater opportunity to embrace the audience’s voice and act on the information they provide. The audiences (previously known as just ‘Publics’) are now seen as individual people. After all these years, PR practitioners are finally learning to monitor conversations over the social networks to manage complaints or compliments in relation to their work, therefore making changes in their work to match the needs of consumer and new media channels that are emerging. Online content publishes have also forced an expansion in the role of PR practitioners.

This Website shows the different Women in the PR field and their opinions on how PR has changed since the start of their career.

http://www.nywici.org/features/interview/public-relations-today

'PR doers'

The image below shows the top 'PR doers' however within the whole list there is only one Woman. In more recent years there have been a lot more Women using social networks within their work yet these networks, for example Twitter negatively portray Woman in PR and still do not represent them as being at the top of their work.

'Mummy Bloggers'

So let’s look more closely at 'Mummy bloggers'!

New sites have been created to help support Women in PR. Many Practitioners see Women posting on blogs as 'Mummy Bloggers' despite their blogs being educated and to a worthy standard. There are so many 'Mummy blogger' websites, so has this influenced the way other PR practitioners see Women in PR, as they are portrayed to be connecting to an audience socially and not as a career.

Although 'Mummy blogging' does not sound like an actual hobby it is. Many Mums from a vast amount of places come together as a social event to blog and chat about current trends or, whatever they feel to be important. Despite it only being popular for about 10 years, it has been a hit all over, especially in the USA. 

 Women in PR outnumber the amount of men yet men have the higher positions. Why would women want to get into this field knowing there are only a small amount of them that will gain this higher position?

I think the representation of Women in PR will change... What do you think?

By Hannah Morrell