Stop cosplaying feminism 

Women are disproportionately facing the sharp edges of redundancy and silence is not the solution, says Nicola Kemp

‘A merger of equals.’ Omnicom’s CEO John Wren was not talking about equality when he explained the rationale behind the leadership musical chairs accompanying Omnicom’s takeover of Interpublic.

He is not alone. In the acres of column inches devoted to the biggest acquisition in agency history, the undeniable truth that it is disproportionately female leaders who have had their chairs removed remains almost entirely unspoken. The systematic rollback of gender equality will not make the industry’s acres of 2025 trend reports. 

While agency leaders are almost universally empathetic toward those facing the harsh reality of redundancy, the crushing rollback of equality is invisible.

For leaders who regularly extol the virtues of culture and creativity to have such a catastrophic lack of curiosity about the ever-increasing inequality in advertising is unforgivable.

Indeed, Justin Billingsley, the former CMO of Publicis Groupe and one of the sharpest minds in the business, was a LinkedIn outlier amid a flurry of dudes mourning the death of DDB but seemingly unaware of the death of women’s creative careers.

A disconnect which reflects the tendency of industry ‘thought leaders’ to lament the demise of agency brands with a fervour they would never apply to the wholesale rollback of equality across the industry. 

Billingsley asked the question that the industry’s smartest journalists almost universally ignored: how do you merge two teams and make gender diversity worse?

When just three of 15 leadership roles went to women, which equates to just 20%, the wider industry response was pure tumbleweed. A lack of accountability, which sparks the question: Do you actually care about gender equality, or are you content to endlessly look the other way as women’s careers disappear in the quicksand of our collective inertia?

A talent exodus

Has our collective desire not to rock the boat become so ingrained that we are content to ignore the fact that 80% of those on the leadership lifeboat are men?

Clumsy analogies aside, the question for the industry is urgent: why are redundancies disproportionately affecting women, and why are we collectively on mute when it comes to addressing them? Were all of those industry allies simply cosplaying feminism all along? 

According to data from Major Players, 120,000 women have left the creative industries over the past two years—a trend which is only accelerating. Barely a day goes by without a message landing in my inbox from another brilliant woman facing redundancy. 

While the fundamental truth remains that return to office policies disproportionately impact those with caring responsibilities, who are disproportionately women.

Even those companies with excellent policies in place are failing to do the groundwork to ensure that middle managers are equipped to support women. When most managers in the media are both accidental and untrained, is it any wonder that we still don’t take women’s health seriously?

From hot flushes in airless Zoom coffins to companies that are content to ignore women’s safety, our working structures still aren’t designed for women. That is, before I even point out the fundamental disconnect between the school day and the working day. 

Calling time on toxic positivity 

Yet increasingly, the women who raise these issues are dismissed as ‘too negative’. Yet for the women asking, ‘Why is my leadership team 80% men?’, the answer is not found in shaming.

It feels awkward to introduce three white male leaders in a town hall as your leadership team in 2025 because it is. Ignoring the issue does not mitigate its impact. The simple truth remains: diversity drives creativity. The world’s best clients recognise this business fundamental even when agency hold co’s choose to ignore it. 

Yet as an industry, we are collectively content to whisper about men’s bad behaviour, while publicly berating women for speaking the truth. Toxic positivity gets us nowhere. 

Genuine optimism is the ultimate act of courage because it demands action. It demands you ask yourself, if you are not optimistic about the industry’s capacity for positive change, then why are you even here?

If you have a platform, do you even deserve it if you are not using it to ask the difficult, urgent questions?

And if you are reading this and facing the sharp edges of redundancy, please set aside any misplaced shame. You are so much more than a job title.

Every single one of the best bosses I ever had was made redundant. Spoiler alert: they were all women, and without exception, they all went on to build bigger and better things.

Yet while I celebrate their individual success, the need to address structures and systems which continue to hold women back collectively has never been more urgent. 

Telling the truth still matters. The fundamental truth remains that when it comes to driving equality forward, large swathes of the industry are going backwards. 

The media industry is built upon trust. So how can leaders expect their clients and employees to trust them if they don’t face up to this truth?

What message are we sending to the next generation of women in media if we don’t even have the guts to question the lack of equality in the first place? Women deserve better.

Nicola Kemp has spent over two decades writing about diversity, equality and inclusion in media. She is now editorial director at Creativebrief and writes for The Media Leader each month.