October 25, 2005 6:14 PM

Where the girls aren't .... wanted
Posted by Diane Danielsonat 6:14 PM

The ad world's lack of females on the creative end was showcased by former WPP exec Neil French earlier this month. Former, because his little "aside" about why women didn't get ahead, led to his abrupt resignation. The following is from the NYTimes article.

A well-known advertising executive and worldwide creative director at WPP Group resigned his position yesterday amid an uproar over remarks he made at an industry event about female creative executives. The comments, by Neil French, 61, drew attention to the absence of women at the highest levels of the creative side of the ad industry.

Mr. French told an audience in Toronto on Oct. 6 that women "don't make it to the top because they don't deserve to," saying their roles as caregivers and childbearers prevented them from succeeding in top positions.

His comments infuriated some executives in the audience of more than 300 people, prompting one of them, Nancy Vonk, the co-chief creative officer of Ogilvy Toronto, a unit of WPP Group, to write a column for a Web site denouncing his comments.

"I kind of felt that Neil was saying out loud what a lot of people were feeling," Ms. Vonk said in an interview. "It's undeniable that women aren't getting far enough in the creative part of agencies, and I thought we were looking at the reason why."

Here's a little more detail from News.telegraph:

According to the city's Globe & Mail newspaper, when asked to explain the dearth of women in advertising, the cigar-chomping Mr French said: "Women don't make it to the top because they don't deserve to. They're crap."

He added that women inevitably "wimp out and go suckle something". During the discussion, Mr French, 61, had a waitress wearing a French maid's uniform serve him drinks. His comments provoked several people to walk out and one of his senior female colleagues later to write an angry rejoinder on the internet that was sent around the advertising world.