How do female practitioners manage public relations in the female dominated profession? rachmat kriyantono, PhD
Universitas Brawijaya
Abstract
This research aims to evaluate the roles conducted by female public relations practitioners in Indonesia. Public relations has been called a gendered profession since more and more women entered the profession. Women, generally, have some feminine skills of communication that help to build relations with public in order to support organizational reputation. Therefore, the research formulates hypothesis that female public relations practitioners provide managerial roles in their activities. By using model of public relations roles as research instruments, the online questioners were responded by 119 respondents, 67 of male practitioners and 52 of female practitioners. The results find that the hypothesis of this study cannot be verified. Findings show that male public relations practitioners tend to apply managerial roles of public relations. This finding is confirmed by the fact that female practitioners are posited to do communication technician roles. This research contributes to encourage the world of public relations to provide more opportunities for female practitioners in managerial roles as a form of womens empowerment.
Keywords: Communication, managerial roles of public relations, male and female public relations, technician roles of public relations
