Gender Bias in Search Marketing

Gender Bias in Search Marketing

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I recently ran across a great article about gender bias in the search marketing space. It states that women in the search marketing industry are undervalued by 21 percent in terms of what they are paid relative to their male counterparts. According to the article this is true even when women have the same level of education and experience.

The article examines a variety of issues related to this significant pay gap and gender bias problems including how women are impacted in terms of:

• Getting a job interview
• Being hired for the job
• Getting the raise and/or promotion
• Getting accepted or being invited to speak at a search marketing conference

The article also examines how the search marketing space can do better at hiring.

“Look at your internet marketing staff – is it 50/50 men/women or way out of balance, more like 80/20? If it’s the latter, you should probably do something about that. Elisa Gabbert says. “If you’re in a hiring role, examine the hiring process – do you tend to screen out more women? Could you be judging their resumes more harshly? Could your job descriptions even reveal a bias, which might dissuade women from applying?”

The article goes on to state that this isn’t “affirmative action” – you don’t need to hire women who are worse at the job than men. What we need to do is question whether we’re overvaluing men that aren’t truly more qualified.”

In addition to the hiring issues, one of the conclusions based on the data was that women are actually better at SEM than men. Check out the PMA article on the topic from a few years ago.

And, whether you’re male of female and looking for a job in performance marketing or have an open position and looking to hire, check out the PMA’s Job Board. It’s free. All of the PMA job listings are from companies that are equal opportunity employers.

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Lisa Picarille

Online Content Strategist at LisaPicarille.com

Lisa Picarille is an online content strategist focusing on digital marketing, branding, and social media for performance marketing companies. She is the former Content Director for the PMA and teaches Internet Marketing at USF Online. An award-winning journalist, Lisa headed the news departments of Wired.com, TechWeb.com, TechTV.com and CRN.com and wrote for Rolling Stone, CRM Magazine, PCWeek, MacWeek, Computerworld and InfoWorld. Lisa has 3 awards for Performance Marketing Advocacy.

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