Mums in Advertising recruits 49 Australian agencies in their initiative to help retain senior women in the advertising industry
MIA (Mums in Ads) has today launched a jobs board featuring vacancies in Adland that are full-time/part-time negotiable, in an initiative to help keep senior women from leaving the industry.
The launch is backed by 49 Australian agencies, who have each committed to advertising all job roles as full-time/part-time negotiable, giving part-timers greater access to opportunities and career progression with the aim of supporting more women into leadership roles.
The move comes off the back of MIA’s Part-Time Pitch – a campaign inspired by Advertising Council Australia’s Create Space Census, which revealed a marked decline in women’s participation in the industry from the age of 35. The pitch deck was sent to over 200 advertising leaders from across 72 Australian agencies, starting hundreds of conversations about the important role of part-time work in retaining female talent.
As of launch, the companies who have signed on to support the initiative include: A3 Recruitment, Akcelo, Alt/Shift, Balmer Agency, Bastion, Bread, Bullfrog, By All Means, Catch The Sun, CHEP Network, Communicado, Content Hustlers, Creative Natives, Digitas, DO Agency, EDGE, Equality Media, Fenton Stephens, Hardhat, Hatched, HBK Agency, HERO, History Will Be Kind, Host/Havas, Howatson & Co, Huckleberry, Innocean, Leo Burnett, Little Village Creative, M&C Saatchi, nh&a consulting, Ortolan, Pangea, Poem, Publicis Worldwide, Reborn, R/GA, Saatchi & Saatchi, Shetouch, SDWM, Snack Drawer, Supermassive, Sunday Gravy, Taboo, TAG, TBWA, The Brand Agency, The Open Arms, The Pistol, Thinkerbell, Think HQ, VMLY&R and WhiteGREY.
Says Regina Stroombergen, co-founder MIA: “We know that, overall, women make up the majority of our industry but this figure is heavily skewed by the many women entering it, not leading it.
“With almost 70% of part-time workers being women and 77% of women being mothers, supporting women through the child-caring years with accessible and adaptable part-time work is one obvious strategy to future-proof female leadership.
“If we want to have a large talent pool of senior women, then part-time women need to be kept in the pipeline and that means allowing them the same access to job opportunities as their peers.”
Adds Julia Spencer, co-founder MIA: “We’re proud to be helping move conversations about gender equity into a place of action and excited to witness our famously competitive industry coming together to make this issue a priority.
“Beyond supporting more women into leadership roles, we believe that making space for parents will benefit everyone by pushing back on the grind culture that has been fuelling Adland’s talent drain.
“By helping to make ours an industry where everyone can be culturally and systemically supported to thrive, we are making advertising a more sustainable career for all of the awesome talent who are drawn here.”
The MIA jobs board is now live. Visit mumsinads.com to view the featured /part-time negotiable jobs that are currently on offer, or to find out how to get your company involved with the initiative.
20 Comments
Allowing some of these agencies with (very recent) histories full of discrimination to Mums and women who worked at these places is the equality version of greenwashing.
Dads taking these part time roles frees up their female partners to stay in the pipeline full time.
Of course, but you can never call them out on it or risk being labelled ungrateful or complaining *insert barbie monologue here*
At the end of the day word of mouth, reputation and people’s lived experiences of those agencies speak volumes.
It’ll be interesting to see how many of these agencies actually implement part time roles – as apposed to say they’re open to negotiate.
Yes, actions from here will speak louder than words. But I can’t remember any other time lots of agencies did something united like this and had the balls to commit to the ‘words’ publicly. Obviously lots of big names missing from that list,some surprising, a few completely unsurprising. What could possibly be the reason an agency would say no to simply having the conversation of part-time engrained in their hiring procedures?
Starting industry-wide change, even the smallest steps, is is not easy. So great to see something positive on here.
Great initiative!
Of course they did.
Should we talk about agencies being caught out putting hiring freezes on straight white guys the last two years? No… silly me, it’s only women’s issues that matter. My bad.
You are deflecting. It is not working.
Go start a conversation about straight, white men all you like.
Go start a conversation about any issue within the industry you have a problem with.
This post is about senior women being lost to advertising, an issue these women have identified and actually done something to address.
A female-only job board? How is this not discrimination?
I’m done with this industry.
Oh that’s right, all the white old men are sitting in a board room together having a circle jerk while not even slightly attempting to hide their sexism.
What old white men? Have you stepped inside an ad agency in 2023? Or been on LinkedIn for that matter?
Hey @Question – We’d love more men working part-time too. That shift would push more change for women more quickly than this job board ever possibly could. We encourage more men to negotiate part-time work for themselves (including the ones featured on our ads board) – this would play a huge role in normalising it as well as de-stigmatising men as carers – which would benefit everyone.
You haven’t quite grasped the concept… Not jobs for females only, just promoting jobs that are advertised by companies who have committed to the new /part-time negotiable language.
Here’s a shocking thought… men can work part-time too.
Know of 3 returning mums who’s jobs no longer existed and were made redundant.
Scandalous
Yes, come and work full time, but we will only pay you part-time- says all these agencies. Job sharing and ACTUALLY reducing a role to part-time in line with the work load…..
of course ddb didn’t do this after making a mum redundant while on mat leave
I believe it was two mums, in the last 6 months.
Mums in Advertising = yes. Mums in Ads = a casting initiative.