Mel Stanley with guests Emma de la Fosse and Renee Vaughn-SutherlandIn my 20 odd years of Agency life I met many female Agency leads, client partners and heads of Account Management but only 2 female Creative Directors; Caitlin Ryan who was then a Creative Director at Proximity and Emma de La Fosse who joins me as a contributor to this Podcast. As part of my FirstWoman venture I was intrigued as to why this might be the case as I believe that women are every bit as 'creative' as men so is it simply the case that like many Corporates, Agencies struggle to have gender balance across creative disciplines because certainly the Client handling functions are populated by many highly competent female leaders - think Annette King, Cilla Snowball, Jackie Stevenson, Clare Lawson to name but a few. Since all companies with over 250 employees are obliged by law to release their gender pay gap figures it has become apparent that many of the big agencies even those run by women failed to make the grade. Across this industry 27% are women but they tend to only rise so far which is what in part skews the figures but regardless women account for only 12% of Creative Directors