Gender and Public Relations : Critical Perspectives on Voice, Image and Identity

Gender is a relatively undefined area of thinking in the public relations field and there have been few serious studies of gender and public relations. Positioned within the critical public relations stream, this book aims to fill a significant gap in the literature and provide readers with the means to understand the social construction of public relations by closely examining its gendered nature.

Although there is a small body of feminist scholarship that problematizes gender in public relations, gender is a relatively undefined area of thinking in the field and there have been few serious studies of the socially constructed roles defining women and men in public relations.

This book is positioned within the critical public relations stream. Through the prism of ‘gender and public relations’, it examines not only the manipulatory, but also the emancipatory, subversive and transformatory potential of public relations for the construction of meaning. Its focus is on the dynamic interrelationships arising from public relations activities in society and the gendered, lived experiences of people working in the occupation of public relations. There are many previously unexplored areas within and through public relations which the book examines. These include:

• the production of social meaning and power relations
• advocacy and activist campaigns for social and political change
• the negotiation of identity, diversity and cultural practice
• celebrity, bodies, fashion and harassment in the workplace
• notions of managing reputation and communicating policy.

In extending the field of inquiry, this edited collection highlights how gender is accomplished and transformed, and, thus how power is exercised and inequality (re)produced or challenged in public relations. The book will expand thinking about power relations and privilege for both women and men and how these are affected by the interplay of social, cultural and institutional practices.

Winner of the Outstanding Book PRide Award, awarded by the National Communication Association (NCA).