A woman's role in communications: a tribute
To commemorate International Women’s Day, Jo Leah, managing director at Weber Shandwick North, takes a look at the progress of women and communications.
Watching my son play rugby the other day I was covertly checking my blackberry between scrums, signing up to a pitch by video conference and checking films via an FTP site - whilst shouting and cheering in volumes vetted by my blindside flanker. Suddenly it struck me how much easier it is to balance work and family responsibilities now that communications are so much slicker.
Ten years ago, standing on the same sideline watching my daughter play football I would have been panicking about emails piling in, checking in with couriers to bring discs to my house and generally juggling calls from clients whilst cheering her slide tackles.
So as we celebrate International Women’s Day, which this year celebrates 100 years of women’s achievements, I think we should have a collective shout out in praise of improved communications. It means that family commitments are now easier to juggle and should no longer be the one big thing that holds women back. Whatever the reports say.
According to Nielson, 36% of 35-54 year old UK females use social networks on the move. Globally, women are the fastest adopters of Facebook and we spend an average 26 hours online per month (ComScore).
Sure it’s hard when there are multiple demands on your time, energy and resources but successful women just use these circumstances to make them even more resourceful and creative.
Watching my kids and their friends capture moments in film clips, perform their own version of hair brush songs, upload to YouTube or Facebook and then email out to guarantee an audience, within their boredom threshold of 20 minutes, inspired me to convert our product sample room at work into a studio. Sure, I knew video was coming. I’d read the stats that told me by 2013, 90% of all internet bandwidth would be video and that even now 42% of all time online includes exposure to online video but I hadn’t got how easily and naturally it could be set up.
So as we enjoy International Women’s Day, let’s hear it for the kids and what a difference a decade makes to multi-tasking mums.