Two years ago at our annual employee offsite called Hotwire Bootcamp, our France Managing Director Virginie Puchaux presented on women’s representation in the media and highlighted the Grand-Canyon-sized gap that exists in the percentage of males to females who are quoted in the media each day. We’re in the business of communications and at a gut level we knew this. To have it presented in stark numbers though was shocking, and we were moved to action. Leaders within our business put programs into motion, talked to clients about their mix of spokespeople and actively trained more women leaders within our client organizations.
The PR Council (which I’m a board member of) recently worked with Talkwalker to understand the latest data on the representation of women and men in the media and found that women were quoted in 32.9% of U.S. media coverage over the last six months while men were featured in 67.1%. The numbers are better than two years ago but we’re not satisfied yet.
As International Women’s Day approaches, Hotwire is joining the PR Council in making a commitment to media train and speaker train thousands of women leaders in 2020 so that we can decrease The Say Gap. As part of our commitment, Hotwire pledges to train 2,020 leaders in celebration of our 20th anniversary.
We are offering online and in-person 2 hour trainings for women and minority leaders who want to be media trained and/or speaker trained. We’re partnering with tech communities, associations and platforms to reach those people we know are amazing in their field and with training, can become acknowledged experts that media and influencers turn to. If you want to be trained or know people who do, send them this post and we’ll be updating the times / dates of trainings here.
2,020 feels like a big number from where we sit today but I believe that big goals should leave you a little sweaty and the feeling that you’re not quite sure how you’ll get there but you know it’s worth doing. We’ll keep you updated on the progress.