Exploring Women Managers’ Gender Role Experiences in Advertising Agencies

Abstract

Although the advertising industry seemingly welcomes women globally, strong horizontal segregation resulting in the feminization of specific departments exists alongside glass ceiling and sticky floor issues. Thus, it is essential to explore how women negotiate their existence through gendered work experiences in organizations. This paper focuses on how women managers experience gender roles in advertising agencies in a developing country. As a developing country integrated into global capitalism, Turkey's advertising industry is mainly made up of international network advertising agencies. Tracing women's growing place in advertising is important for presenting a model for gender equality and women's rights in developing countries. Through an interpretive phenomenological analysis of interviews with 15 women managers with more than 15 years of advertising agency experience, the study finds that women who are in managerial positions in ad agencies tend to define themselves as a manager rather than a woman. In order to become ideal workers, they embrace the hegemonic masculinity and ambivalent sexism within the heteronormative matrix as they learn to perform unfemininity. They choose not to contest gender meanings and categories that function as disempowering and marginalizing elements for women.