Gender pay gap not a reality in the Indian advertising industry, claim leaders

Unequal pay between male and female executives for the same work or role is a sad reality of our times. From films to tech and even the informal sector, a gender pay gap does exist. According to the Monster Salary Index (MSI) published in March 2019, women in the country earn 19% less than men.

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However, the advertising industry claims to differ.

Rohit Ohri

Rohit Ohri, Chairman and CEO, FCB Group India, said the salaries at FCB Group are entirely based on talent. “I think in today's day and age, this is a very peculiar conversation, we have absolutely no gender pay gap in FCB. It's entirely dependent on talent. We were the first agency in India to have a female CEO. Today we have Swati Bhattacharya as the Creative Chairperson.”

“In Fact, we focus on getting more women into senior positions in the company. We have an initiative called ‘ She can and She will’ where we have women leaders from the industry talking about their journeys in an attempt to inspire more women to become leaders,” he added.

Amit Wadhwa

According to Amit Wadhwa, Chief Executive Officer, Chief Executive Officer, dentsu Creative India, there is absolutely no gender pay gap at their agency. “For us, it's really clear, we pay on the basis of scales. We have scales for different roles like planning, strategy, creativity etc. There is absolutely zero difference between a male and a female executive. It is absolutely based on merit.”

As per Taniya Arora, HR head at Cheil India, pay disparity in the advertising industry doesn’t exist anymore be it from a gender point of view or the other, it is a requirement of the skills which are mapped to the position.

“Pre-digital era, the industry used to be dominated by leading agencies but during the digital era, multiple boutique agencies have come up giving flexible working hours and remote working facilities to its employees. Now, people have started getting multiple opportunities if they are not being compensated as per market standards. This has ensured that companies are valuing the critical talent within and giving them fair compensation. Employee retention is now a key factor which makes organisations go more flexible with the current scenario,” she explained.

A mid-level manager, at a leading Indian agency, confirmed that she does get paid the same as her male co-worker. Another young woman working for a digital agency confirmed the same.

Sowmya Iyer

Sowmya Iyer, Founder and CEO of DViO Digital stated, that at DViO, questions around gender equality never occur because it's non-existent; by default, they keep it only meritorious. “You are a merit-driven organization when the conversations are not around gender, and at DViO Digital, we work towards hiring and promoting our employees based on their merit and not just gender. Therefore, more and more companies should not give significance to this question and keep it purely meritorious.”

“Our current workforce has a fair divide of 55:45 women to men ratio; a similar trend can be seen in our leadership team, which has a 60:40 ratio (60% women and 40% men), which is not by design but by default,” she added.

Yousuf Rangoonwala

However, sharing a personal anecdote, Yousuf Rangoonwala, Founder and Head of Strategy at Kakkoii Strategy, Communications, Technology and Entertainment shared an incident from a few years ago.

“A very senior ex-colleague of mine had told me that she gets about 40% less than a typical creative national head. For an industry that puts out ads regarding gender equality, this is humiliating and hypocritical,” he said.

“I had actually thought of a campaign with a colleague of mine discussing the pay gap in offices across. However, the brand rejected it saying this was hypocritical and warned us the makers of the ad would be trolled,” he added.

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