Working girls : revisiting the gendering of public relations

Women make up the majority of public relations practitioners, suggesting that the liberal-feminist battle for workplace equality has been won. Analysing scholarship on the gendering of public relations, which began to emerge in the 1980s, this paper examines how the dual processes of feminisation and professionalisation mutually reinscribe one another in ways that reproduce the patriarchal gender relations underpinning the public relations industry. Recent Australian examples demonstrate the impact of the gendering of public relations and the need for greater attention to, and reflexivity about, gender issues in public relations by both the industry and by scholars.