The number of women at managing director level or above in UK advertising agencies plummeted by more than a quarter last year, falling to the lowest proportion since 2003, according to a report by the Institute of Practitioners in Advertising.
The IPA, which represents advertising and media buying agencies accounting for more than 80% of the UK sector, found that women accounted for just 13.5% of the 415-odd executives designated as a chair, chief executive or managing director at a UK ad agency.
This is down on the 17% share of top-level roles women accounted for in the 2010 report, with the total number designated as running agencies down from 76 to 56 year-on-year, a 26% fall.
According to the IPA, the 13.5% share of top roles held by women is the lowest proportion since its industry-wide survey of 2003, when they held just 11% of the top-tier jobs.
However, the IPA points out that there was an increase in the number of women holding "other executive management" positions within agencies in 2011, which climbed from 25.5% to 27.3% year-on-year.
This meant that the overall proportion of women accounting for roles in executive management or higher held stable year-on-year at 22.4%, the IPA said.
The report found that there is an almost equal split between the number of men and women employed in the industry overall – 51.3% and 48.7% respectively.
In terms of ethnicity, 90.6% of staff in the industry are from a white background. In 2010 the proportion stood at 90%.
Overall, there was a 2.8% increase in the total number of people employed in the sector to 19,372 in 2011 despite a decrease in the number of agencies signed up as members of the IPA – close to the pre-recession high water mark of 2008.
The report also found that the advertising industry is the preserve of the young, with just 13.2% of staff aged between 40 and 50 and 5.7% older than that. The average age of employees in advertising remains at 33.8.
Contrary to the popular belief that the rise of technology would lead to a generation of workers liberated from offices, the IPA report shows that just 1.2% of staff – 236 people – work for their agencies from home "on a regular basis".
This is down more than a quarter on the 321 staff members who were able to do so in 2010.
However, the IPA said that flexible working hours have now been introduced by 16.3% of ad agencies, and 10% of agencies said they were using technology to enable this to happen.
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