Weight of history
It’s not just the attitudes of the individuals that women have to overcome, but the weight of the historical definitions of gender that are behind those attitudes, and these definitions influence both men and women. Kathy Woodward, head of the BPIF, explains that this history means print is not even on the radar of many young women selecting a profession.
"Not only have women traditionally not gone into print production," she says," they haven’t traditionally gone into production in any industry. Men historically did pressroom work because heavy lifting, working with machines and getting messy was seen as unsuitable for women."
Convention, Woodward explains, can continue to dictate people’s subconscious decisions even when the rationale behind the tradition – that certain environments are unsuitable for women, for example – has long since been debunked.
This constitutes a vicious cycle, adds Thompson. Men frequently come into the industry following their father’s success in the field, whereas women have very few role models to make a career in print seem like a viable option.
Thankfully, there are signs that this is starting to change, with Woodward’s role at the BPIF a massive boost in this area, but there is still some distance to go.
What is needed to take things further is greater promotion of the industry to young women. Here, though, there is a real barrier of outmoded perceptions of the industry to overcome. Mercury’s Dani Novick explains that the image most people have of the printing industry is not a particularly attractive one.
"The general perception of print is a long way off reality," she says. "People think that this is an old-fashioned, dirty, noisy environment, which it’s not anymore."
It’s not just women that this deters, of course, print has long had a problem attracting new entrants. Perhaps, then, rather than specifically a gender issue, the lack of women in the industry is actually part of a wider recruitment issue the industry is facing.
Closed shop
Novick certainly takes this view. She explains that all individuals making a conscious decision about what industry to enter will be put off by the misconception that print is reliant upon dirty, outmoded technology and baffling terminology.
"Print has always been a very closed shop kind of industry with people accustomed to talking in technical jargon as a form of one-upmanship," says Novick. "What we need to do is start talking about how inspirational the results are, how cutting-edge the technology is and how, because many companies have diversified into cross-media to become marketing fulfilment organisations, the industry is very dynamic, very innovative and incredibly exciting. That should capture the imagination of the next generation with their connected and media mindsets."
More effectively selling how exciting the industry can be will ensure, says Novick, that print does not just attract those who have fallen into the trade due to it being a well trodden-route for people like them.
Attracting a diverse workforce to print, including different sorts of male individuals as well as female, is of course crucial in light of the kind of market that printers are now selling to. Managing director of Precision Printing Gary Peeling says that the comparatively high percentage of women in his company has had a very positive impact.
"If you’re going to sell to a diverse market place you need diversity in your company," he says. "There’s no point just hiring all of the same sort of people, especially as 80% of our buyers working within publishing and marketing are women."
Peeling is, of course, keen to point out that no company should operate a policy of positive discrimination when it comes to hiring women. While industry-wide incentives to promote a career in print are needed, recruitment should always operate on the basis of the best person for the job in question.
Merit rules
Nicola Bisset, managing director at Optimus, agrees. Despite being warned when she first started out in print that she would never get anywhere as a woman, she says that over-zealous encouragement of women to enter the world of print could be counterproductive.
"If you make a huge thing out of there not being enough women then this highlights that there appears to be a problem and actually introduces the idea to women that there might be a valid reason for not pursuing that career," she says. "It’s good to give encouragement to women that, yes, there are opportunities in the industry for them, but only in the same way that there are opportunities in any industry for anyone of any gender."
Getting more women into print and reaping the benefits of a more diverse workforce should, then, be a matter of better promoting the exciting opportunities that print offers to people from all walks of life. While sexist comments and attitudes are still regrettably a feature of some printing environments, most people would agree that the days of Page 3 calendars in pressrooms and women not being taken seriously by clients are a thing of the past, and will be even rarer the more diverse print’s workforce becomes.
Of course, the factors that inspire individuals to pursue a certain career will always be complicated and difficult to predict, particularly as they often respond to underlying, unexamined preconceptions about what people ‘like me’ do. What the industry might do to redress the gender balance is send out positive messages about what print can achieve, and so, in the words of Precision’s Emma Thompson, what "a great industry it is to be in, no matter who you are."