Yes, I suckle
House on Red Corner · 2005-10-25
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An evening with Neil French was a $125 per plate event. Mr. French is a creative legend, and the head of WPP (one of the two advertising conglomerates in existence). As such, he is my big big big boss. He said, in answer to a question as to why there are not more high-ranking women in creative agency positions:
“…they don’t work hard enough…Women don’t make it to the top because they don’t deserve to. They are crap…they are always going to go suckle something.”
(There has been no transcript released, so that is the best I can do to put it together from the New York Times and AdAge.)
So.
The struggle continues.
I wrote to the CEO of my company and requested that an area be set aside for breast-feeding women to pump milk for their babies. I included statistics in support of the claim that it is indeed cost-effective. I submitted the proposal in March: the answer was that there was no space. I submitted it again in light of these comments by Mr. French.
Let’s see what happens.