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WACL Marks Centenary in 2023 with Mission for 50% Of All CEOs to Be Women

16/01/2023
Group745
Marketing & PR
London, UK
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To amplify its goals, WACL has announced its first-ever patrons – seven high-profile women from business, politics, sport and entertainment
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WACL celebrates its 100th birthday in 2023 by declaring its ambition to achieve 50% women in leadership across the communications industry – and for those women to represent the full diversity of British society.

Only when 50% of CEOs within communications are women, will the industry have achieved the level of change it deserves, and WACL will bring this influence to bear across other industries, propelling change beyond communications. Equal representation among CEOs is not a standalone objective. The quest to achieve this will help ensure equal representation across all areas and at all levels of a business where key decisions are made. 

Rania Robinson, president of WACL and CEO & Partner of Quiet Storm Advertising, said: “I am proud to be President of WACL in such a landmark year for our organisation. The 100th anniversary gives us all a renewed energy and focus for our efforts to move the dial in terms of the representation of all women, both in our industry and in the communications we create.

“We can do this by building a more inclusive work environment where women’s goals, talents and choices are fully respected and supported. The result, we know, will be an enriched talent pool and more effective work. After all, evidence indicates that as well as being good for business performance, better gender diversity also leads to increases in other types of diversity too, as women typically take on more DE&I work.”

To amplify its goals, WACL has announced its first-ever patrons – seven high-profile women from business, politics, sport and entertainment – who will help spread the message to the widest community possible. They include: Oti Mabuse, one of the world’s most successful dancers and previously a professional dancer on Strictly Come Dancing, The Right Honourable Harriet Harman KC MP, Kate Mosse OBE FRSL, International award-winning bestselling selling Novelist, Non-Fiction writer and playwright, & Founder of the Women’s Prize for Fiction; Dame Sharon White, Chairman of John Lewis Partnership; Maisie Summers-Newton MBE, Athlete & Paralympic Champion; Maggie Alphonsi MBE, former England rugby player and Rugby World Cup Winner and Baroness Helena Kennedy KC. 

To build a roadmap towards its target of 50% women in leadership across the industry, WACL is also building data, and will be benchmarking progress towards 50%, to urge the communications industry to not just report on what's mandated, but to measure with meaning to really understand their gender leadership gap and work to close it. The data will also be used to determine how intersectionality impacts women’s progress in the workplace.

Within this roadmap, WACL has identified five key levers of change to drive gender equality in the workplace, and is building a practical playbook for change to help businesses implement action plans in all five of these areas, which include:

- Change the language of leadership: Define the truly valuable leadership traits and hardwire that language into recruitment.

- Promote for potential: Understand how people of different genders move up the promotion ladder and introduce competence rather than achievement-based criteria which are often gendered.

- Flexible first: Consider how flexible working helps to level out inequalities.

- Be a woman’s health hero: Create workplaces that meet women’s more complex health needs at different life stages.

- Work like the world is watching: Build workplace cultures where everyone can succeed, free of harassment, assault and prejudice; and represent all women more authentically and positively in the work that we create.

Creative work produced by the industry has a big role to play in society – not least because 80% of purchase decisions are made by women – which is why WACL will also be stimulating nationwide conversation about the importance of representing the lived experience of women and girls in a positive and authentic way.

An external ad campaign is in the pipeline, as well as a documentary showing how far the industry has come, and how far it still has to go.

WACL will also continue to support and elevate upcoming generations of women in our industry as it has done for the last 100 years. In that time, WACL has grown to a body of 300 senior, diverse women with a clear mission to accelerate gender equality.

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