Women and Public Relations: A Study on Turkey’s Female PR Experts

Year 2019, Issue: 4, 152 - 166, 07.10.2019

Tuğçe Ertem Eray Pınar Aslan

https://doi.org/10.32739/etkilesim.2019.4.68

Abstract

As of 1980s, Turkey has been more active in the field of public relations thanks to the accelerating effects of globalization and formalization of public relations education. Female domination has long been the situation in the sector and this leads to the perception that public relations is a woman’s job. Since the literature review shows that there are few studies conducted in Turkey regarding the situation and the importance of women in the field of public relations is not emphasized enough, this study intends to make a current evaluation on the role and the place of Turkish women in the field of public relations. Therefore, female public relations experts and academics have been interviewed with the aim of detecting the place and importance of women in the field of public relations in Turkey. The data collected shows that the reason why there are more women than men in this field is the sexist point of view. Problems in the academic education and job definition of the profession result in the misperception of public relations in Turkey. It is seen that public relations which is associated with womanly behavior is not preferred by men as a profession. Furthermore, the fact that women work more as technicians whereas men work as executives in the sector and salaries are two issues that have come up throughout the study.

Keywords

public relations, women, public relations practitioners, public relations academicians

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