ABSTRACT
In October 2005, Neil French, the consulting creative director for one of the world’s largest advertising and marketing services conglomerates, WPP, was forced to resign in the backlash to sexist comments he made at a Toronto industry event. In responding to a question about why there are so few women creative directors in advertising, French used very colourful language to argue that men are better at the creative dimensions of advertising than are women. Men, he said, are more willing and able to live for work, while women are more inclined to work to live. According to French, the demands of pregnancy and child-rearing compromise the creative capacity of women to the extent that they are not generally wellsuited to creative work in advertising. For most industry insiders there was nothing out of the ordinary about this point of view; it was consistent with a particular gendering of creativity that has become the norm in creative agency work culture. For this reason, the global debate that French’s comments sparked took many industry folk by surprise, including the highly regarded creative luminary himself.1
