The myth of salary discrimination in public relations

One of the more puzzling dimensions of the public relations literature is the persistent claim of salary discrimination against women in the field, despite the absence of even a single comprehensive study on the topic. Even more disturbing is that closely related fields like marketing and advertising-as well as more professionalized fields like medicine-have made no such claims of discrimination, despite larger salary gaps and larger correlations between salary and gender than in the PR field. Detailed statistical analysis of a major salary survey and a review of existing studies both indicate that there is no empirical reason to believe that there is gender-based salary discrimination in the PR field. Findings from the PR salary survey show that there is little or no discrimination, even without considering factors (e.g., employment breaks-in-service) that were shown to have substantial explanatory power in salary surveys from other fields. Circumstantial evidence of PR salary discrimination existed 20 years ago, but the evidence available since that time suggests strongly that there has been little or no salary discrimination for at least the past decade. (C) 2004 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.