Dive summary:
- The advertising industry as a whole has been historically dominated by men, but for mostly unknown reasons, media buyer positions are overwhelming occupied by women.
- Speculation from industry experts for the uneven staffing includes that women are drawn to the relationship building aspects of the position, that women tend to hire more women and that women have more natural talents in multitasking and nuance.
- The biggest factor, though, may still be the society-wide tendency to push women to lower paying positions; depending on who you ask, women are less financially driven to pursue high-paying positions, while others say it's a result of high-level male executives pushing women into the less lucrative positions.
From the article:
"But according to some agency execs, it’s not just a biological disposition that leads women to gravitate toward planning and buying roles. There are systemic reasons, too. Multiple male execs cited the fact that women are more often than men pushed into lower-paying roles across all industries.
According to the Institute for Women’s Policy Research, women working full-time earned 80.9 percent of what men earned per week in 2012. The group suggested that discrepancy could in part be explained by 'occupational and sector segregation,' in which women are more likely to work in sectors and roles that pay less than others."