Glass Ceiling in Public Relations 3IntroductionIn 2002 women made up 70% of public relations practitioners. In the same year,
PR Week
reported that female practitioners made approximately 38% less than their malecounterparts. A study in the early nineties shows that over 80% of public relationsstudents are women (Toth & Grunig, 1993). With the vast majority of new publicrelations practitioners being female and the threat of the feminization of the publicrelations industry, understanding how the glass ceiling affects female practitioners iscrucial to maintaining the credibility and viability of the industry. Since the earlyeighties, when women began appearing in droves in the corporate workforce, there havebeen numerous accounts of gender based inequities.Fourteen years have passed since Hymowitz and Schellhardt (1986) firstreported on the glass ceiling, that invisible barrier faced by middle-management women who want to attain top-level positions. Although41.4% of the 2001 United States workforce is comprised of women (U.SBureau Of Labor Statistics, 2001), few women have ascended to the topmanagement level and pay gaps between women and men still exist(Ragins & Sundstrom, 1989; Tsui, 1998) as cited by Choi and Hon (2002,p. 230)These statistics have had significant effects on the public relations industry, anindustry that is predominantly female at the tactical level but overwhelmingly male at theC-level and upper management levels. For women planning to enter the public relationsindustry, how they perceive the glass ceiling, their knowledge of its prevalence within the
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