Women in Public Affairs (WiPA) has launched its second annual survey to discover among other things how the industry has responded to the impact of COVID-19 and how it is promoting diversity in the sector. The survey is open until Friday 30th October and can be found online here.
As well as providing a comparative analysis of results to last year, WiPA has responded to feedback and are opening the survey to all public affairs professionals regardless of gender. This should provide an opportunity to compare results between men and women.
Last year’s survey found that 1 in 4 (27%) women in the sector said they have experienced sexual harassment at work and that nearly 1 in 3 women (30%) rated the industry as poor at protecting and helping women deal with sexual harassment, with only 4% rating the industry as good.
In response, WiPA brought together industry leaders to discuss the findings and launched three industry pledges, backed by the PRCA, to support women working in both agency and in-house public affairs roles. The pledges called on businesses to:
- Publish pay bands to introduce transparency to promotion, pay and reward processes to reduce pay inequalities;
- Commit not appearing on or holding events involving all male panels;
- Publish and signpost sexual harassment policies and support services to staff.
Chair of Women in Public Affairs, Laura Sainsbury said “We are delighted to be partnering with Opinium Research once again on an industry survey to find out the experience of our members working in the public affairs industry. The annual survey is an important milestone in understanding what we as an industry can do better and we hope to see an improvement following the launch of our industry-backed pledges earlier this year.”