Women in PR...the Debate

Here's the debate's premise as stated in class: "women will always work in PR, but will never run it." Despite the fact that this ended up being a rather more emotionally charged issue in a class with only 3 men and 20+ women than I was expecting, I personally don't see this to be a valid premise for a debate.

It's the absolutes "always" and "never" in the premise to which I take exception. I was so frustrated last night when I got home from class knowing that I learned a name for that logical fallacy at some point in my undergraduate career in one or many of my rhetoric and speech classes, but all of my books on these subjects are by necessity back home in Texas. I have so many of them that it would've been ridiculous to ship them all over to London for six months, and who knew which ones I'd want to look at and when? Ah! It was somewhat amusing, however, sitting at my desk with words like enthymeme! syllogism! warrant! evidence! Aristotle! Toulmin! screaming around inside my head and no books to refer to in order to shut them up. The amusing part being, of course, the newest smug I-told-you-so that I intend to rub-in to my sister and boyfriend, who generally can't get enough of making fun of me for keeping all my textbooks, which I do so I can refer to them later...ha! I love being right!

Anyway, being as I was lacking the resources in paperback, I instead googled "logical fallacy" to see if I could come up with the name of the problem I was thinking of, but to rather disappointing results, I must admit. There were some pretty good lists of fallacies, some with 42 different listings and examples, but none with the "argument from absolutes" that I was looking for, unless it was talking about moral absolutism vs relativism, which wasn't what I had in mind. And I still can't remember what it is called--obviously not absolutes, but something else. I'm thinking it's in Toulmin and has something to do with the questionable acceptability of warrants without qualifiers, but I'll have to keep looking.

Although, I suppose it could be just lumped into the invalid deductive reasoning category and left at that. At any rate, if you see a random, all-caps exclamation in the middle of another blog entry, be forewarned that things I am ruminating on tend to spring to mind unpredictably in the middle of an unrelated activity, and the all-caps thing would mean that I've finally remembered this annoyingly just-out-of-reach term. However, it's more likely that I'll be taking a shower or shelving books at the library or be out with friends in the middle of a busy street in central London than writing my blog when this happens--the last two in particular, as they have more of an embarrassment factor when I go to shouting random words.

Okay, so if you want to check out some of the sites I visited, I am including a couple links below. It may help you in your argumentation, if you have never learned any of these before. Or it may remind you of things you've almost forgotten, like it did for me:

http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/
http://www.csun.edu/~dgw61315/fallacies.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argumentation_theory

Anyway, to my point...yes, I did have one...the way the premise is stated now, it really only takes one woman in a position to run PR to overturn the whole proposition. Cori related the names of 3 female CEOs in class.

Done!

But then, being me, I started thinking that the phrase "will never run" needed more clarifying anyway. Call it an argument from definition. What is meant by 'run'? Be in the majority of senior management PR positions or CEO's of consultancies of the industry as a whole across all geographical areas? Or be in some management positions period? In England only? hmm...that would definitely change the structure of the argument.

Also, Michaela pointed out that the vote on the issue before and after the debate was virtually the same (if you discount the fact that the team opposing the premise all voted for themselves afterwards, and whether they really convinced themselves or were just giving a show of solidarity to their team is a more relevant question since the voting was a show-of-hands).

I think that audience opinion remained the same because both teams chose to argue from facts exclusively. Facts may elucidate opinions, but they do not generally change them; emotions do. There is a pyramid (of course there is, isn't there always some type of pyramid or square grid in communications theory? why can't we ever see a trapezoid or something, just to change it up?!) for the types of appeal to give in arguments (it is from Aristotle, in case you didn't know and were curious). One point on the pyramid is logos...the facts (which both sides used, as mentioned above). Another point is ethos...an appeal from an authority or one based on the credibility of the speaker. The last point is pathos...the appeal to the emotions in the audience (ahhh! beware the mob!). The best arguments use a mixture of all three appeals, particularly since the pathos appeal is generally the most effective in inspiring action or a change in behavior; both sides of the women in PR debate would have benefited from using it in their arguments.

And, just to put some ethos behind my last statement, Roger Haywood, PR guru, wrote this in his book Manage Your Reputation (see my bookshelf on the left sidebar for a thumbnail), "Sometimes, managers rely too much on logic and believe that all decisions are made on a rational basis alone. The factor they may overlook is that decisions are influenced by opinions and attitudes. It matters significantly what people feel..." (that's on p. 11, by the way).

Lastly, I just wanted to reiterate my point about the average age of the male-centric PR management currently in place, particularly in the UK and the US. I don't know for certain, having not done much actual research into the subject, but I would venture an educated guess that a lot of these guys got into the game when it was unfashionable or, indeed, actively discouraged, for a woman to work outside of the home. Many are nearing retirement age. I find it hard to believe that if the PR industry is 70% female, as someone gave out in class, that if even a mere 15% of the upper management of the industry were to retire Baby-Boomer style within the next 10 years or so, that they would be replace--each and every one--with the males that comprise the 30% of practitioners. Some will, yes. Of course they will, your sex shouldn't determine your viability as a management candidate. But probability and statistics tell us that women should get the majority of those roles. If they don't, then the PR industry is actively engaging in sexism when making its management decisions, and I know that in my lawsuit-happy country (the US in case that description didn't give it away!!) that that is grounds for a class-action lawsuit.

Which reminds me of another point that made my skin boil. What was the survey and who mentioned it in class? Something about CEOs and managers being reluctant to hire replacements for themselves amongst the female contingent because they might go on maternity leave?! Uuuughhh! Really?! Whatever happened to the progress women have made in many countries with daycare provisions?

Well, at any rate, I guess it will be interesting to watch as it develops...