IPA finds women are under-represented in ad industry's top jobs
The IPA have released a report that concludes women are severely under-represented in the upper echelons of UK advertising agencies.
It said the media, marketing and advertising business is dominated by young, white men. Headlines in the report included the fact that only one in 20 working in the sector is over 50 and one in 10 is from a non-white background.
The gender imbalance is not pronounced at more junior level, with an 'almost equal' split of men and women amongst the 18,360 people employed by the industry. However only 22.4% of those employed at senior level were female.
But on a more positive note, this did mark a small 2.4% improvement on the figure the last time the survey was carried out in 2009.
More vexing is what happens to the maturer members of the industry. Only 5.3% of those working in advertising are over 50 and just 13.5% are between 41 and 49. The average age of an employee across the business was 33.7.
So where do the white haired class go? Answers below please.
The survey found that nine out of 10 staff in the business were from a white background.