Gender equality: do women lack ambition?

Kevin Roberts, chairman of Saatchi and Saatchi, once proudly declared that “nothing is too politically incorrect” for his advertising agency, “because we are creative mavericks and vagabonds”. But it appears he “may have been mistaken”, said Matthew Garrahan in the FT. Roberts was put on enforced leave this week, after giving an interview in which he said the debate about gender bias in the advertising industry was “over”, and suggested that women lack “vertical ambition”. Saatchi and Saatchi’s parent company, Publicis, swiftly distanced itself from his comments, saying it would “not tolerate anyone speaking for our organisation who does not value the importance of inclusion”.

Roberts is certainly wrong about one thing, said The Times. Gender bias is far from “over” in his profession. In the lower ranks, granted, female talent abounds: advertising attracts many more women than men at entry level. But they don’t make it far up the ladder. At Saatchi and Saatchi, 65% of the workforce is female – but only 32% of senior managers are. Roberts claims he has tried to promote more women, but that they keep refusing senior posts. They are, he says, more interested in work-life balance than in status and money. “They are going: ‘Actually, guys, you’re missing the point, you don’t understand: I’m way happier than you,’” he claims. “Their ambition is not a vertical ambition, it’s this intrinsic, circular ambition to be happy. So they say: ‘We are not judging ourselves by those standards that you idiotic dinosaur-like men judge yourself by.’” All of which is at least “partially true”, said Grace Dent in The Independent. Getting to the top in any profession requires punishing hours and an “unyielding focus” that leaves little time for family life. We all know “brilliant women” who scaled back their careers after concluding, perfectly reasonably, that they “wanted to put their own babies to bed each night”. Roberts was merely expressing support for that decision. Yet he has been hauled off to the “Shamed Man Gulag”, his 40-year glittering career hanging in the balance. This kind of overreaction just makes women seem thin-skinned and hysterical. It’s a funny way to promote equality.