Forty years on, the ‘Velvet Ghetto’ still traps women in PR’s soft power roles
Despite women now making up 65% of the public relations workforce, their careers remain constrained by the same ‘soft power’ expectations that shaped the profession four decades ago.
Speaking at the first of BNU’s rebooted inaugural lecture series, Professor Sarah Williams warned that PR continues to be defined as a ‘Velvet Ghetto’ - a term coined in the early 80s for a workplace that appears progressive yet quietly limits women’s power and progression in the industry.
“Despite the fact that it’s a female-dominated profession, women are still not reaching the top in the numbers they should be in 2025,” she told an audience of academic peers.
Prof Williams, a former PR practitioner, drew on sociologist Erving Goffman’s Dramaturgical Lens to explain how women in PR continually balance performance with persona.
“We’re constantly negotiating who we are authentically with our performed self,” she said. “And we self-regulate so that we don’t step outside the boundaries that have been established for us.”
Persona vs Performance
This performance, she argues, is often shaped by traditional female stereotypes - politeness, servility and being ‘always on’ - which become expected and exploited. It leads to the “friendliness trap”; a professional norm where women must be endlessly approachable and agreeable.
At worst it reinforces stereotypes such as the “PR bunny”, casting women in the role of support rather than strategy.
“Nothing has changed in the intervening 40 years,” said Prof Williams, Pro Vice Chancellor (External Collaborations) at BNU. “We have women concentrated in lower-paying, technical positions and men are dominating in the higher level, decision-making roles.
“What (women) are demonstrating is flexibility, agility, they’re juggling lots of different things and they are trying to do so in a manner that’s calm and professional, and really appearance driven.”
Her qualitative research with female PR practitioners revealed how gender expectations manifest across three key stages of professional practice.
- Preparation - women tend to invest heavily in technical skills such as writing, analytics and campaign planning rather than strategy or leadership
- Performance - they adopt impression management strategies, maintaining a professional appearance and a non-confrontational communication style
- Reception - in return, women are often perceived through limited or stereotypical lenses by clients, organisations and society
Prof Williams told her audience that both practitioners and organisations had a role to play in challenging these long-standing issues, to break free of the Velvet Ghetto.
She urged women in PR to pursue strategic roles, seek mentorship and challenge self-limiting behaviours. For organisations, she called for structural reform: meaningful flexible working policies, defined leadership pathways and a cultural shift away from outdated expectations of how women should behave.
Only then, she said, can the industry move beyond performative equality - and replace it with progress.
Prof Williams is the co-author of the influential book Women’s Work in Public Relations, published in 2024.
She is a Chartered Manager, a member of the Chartered Institute of Marketing, an Accredited Member of the Chartered Institute of Public Relations, a Certified Management and Business Educator and a Principal Fellow of the Higher Education Academy.
Prior to her time at BNU, Prof Williams was the Interim Director of the Business School at the University of Wolverhampton where she previously held other management positions as Associate Director of the Business School, Head of Department of Marketing, Innovation, Leisure and Enterprise, and Principal Lecturer for Student Experience.