Ex-journos and promo girls : feminization and professionalization in the Australian public relations industry

This chapter examines the experiences of female public relations practitioners in Australia in order to understand the impact of professionalization and feminization on both the identities of individual female practitioners and the industry's professional identity and status. We focus on these experiences during the 1980s because this decade represented a pivotal period for the Australian public relations industry, in which women entered public relations practice in greater numbers and first came to dominate the industry numerically (Rea 2002; Zawawi 2009). Reflective of large-scale transformations in the gendering of work in the Western world, this 'feminization' of public relations is partly attributable to the rise of second-wave feminism, and the consequent entry of increasing numbers of women into the paid workforce (Fitch and Third 2010). At the same time, the status and role of public relations as an occupational practice was rapidly transforming. It gained increasing recognition in the corporate sector, and its domain expanded beyond media relations to include such areas as government relations, investor relations, and corporate communication. This period also witnessed, as part of broader attempts to improve the professional standing of the industry, the increasing introduction of public relations to universities as a programme of study, and the implementation of practitioner examinations by the Public Relations Institute of Australia (PRIA). These twin processes of feminization and professionalization have framed professional discourses around public relations, and the gendering of the field continues to have a significant impact on its professional identity.