Girl Power: To My Faura Project Team, With Love
This is part 1 of 3 of the #iloveorcom series, where I talk about communication trends and styles as seen by an OrCom major. This series features select communication theories and management concepts, as seen applicable by yours truly.
Public relations, from its formal establishment as a field of practice to now, is still a very feminine field. As much as I want to go all feminist in this post with the saturation of the female demographic in the lower parts of the hierarchy and the privileged white male demographic in top management, staring down on the impenetrable, seemingly unbreakable glass ceiling, that would have to be another much-researched, data-heavy story for another day. For now, I have to make do with what I can confidently lay claim to: girl power game in modern times is strong.
Aside from demographics, what makes public relations feminine as well is the very nature of the work. Of course it’s a management function, as with marketing and advertising. But what separates PR from the IMC triad is the specific genderlect* that it requires and is chiefly identified with: building, maintenance, and enrichment of relationships.
That’s where the feminine, in general, excel. They undergo hands-on training of sorts on a daily basis given their being surrounded by the fellow feminine. The distinct advantage is seen in how those who go on to become PR practitioners build networks and accumulate relevant contacts at such an impressive pace.
That’s also exactly what I’ve seen in one of my electives this semester, Philippine Arts 164 (Curatorship and Collection Management), where our 11-strong, predominantly feminine class was required to launch an awareness campaign in order to lobby for Padre Faura St. to become an official cultural heritage site. As the culmination of the project, we were also tasked to launch, implement, and manage a weeklong event that would hopefully boost whatever hype we have created, mainly through engendering active participation of students in schools along Padre Faura St., particularly UP Manila. In turn, we also aim to get our message across to government. To quote my teammates, maliit na bagay (no biggie, in this context; BUT in actuality, YES BIGGIE).
As the Filipino colloquialism goes, past is past. I won’t delve into the entire process, as it would feel like going through the sleep-deprived week for the second time. What I would do, however, is to highlight just how feminine genderlect helped us achieve so many things during the entire process.
Networking: In just a month, we were able to amass a network of contacts that provided various forms of assistance that contributed to the success of the event. We also were able to reach a good size of audience, with event attendance sheets alone speaking for the success of the event (turnout and the demographics of said turnout, after all, are primary measures of success of any event). It was networking communication, second nature to anyone performing genderlect, that was key to this unlocked achievement, so to speak. It is also through the inherently persuasive quality of feminine genderlect that our team was able to encourage participation from the aforementioned sizable turnout.
Nurturing: Along the way, as with any team effort and per management tenet, conflict is inevitable. Emotions flared and personalities clashed, but it is in how we were still able to work together because we were still united by a vision, and in how we were able to mitigate such conflicts are why I am most thankful for the predominant genderlect.
It is after this experience when I am most ready to resort to physicality when I hear another overgeneralization that women are too emotional and therefore make for bad problem solvers. Possibly with the post-event analysis yet to be printed (and finished).
Outside the genderlect-influenced achievements, both in terms of internal and external communication, we have also gotten the (dashing) Vice Mayor Isko Moreno to attend the dialogue we invited him to, generate organic results such as social media engagement and even a Diliman counterpart interested enough in the project to want to feature our project in their project: a website for one of their journalism classes (which makes my organic-results-school-of-thought-subscriber self very happy), and survived the week beautifully (if I may say so myself).
In terms of the Student Evaluation of Teacher (SET), on the item, “Even if this course wasn’t required, it would still be worth taking”, it’s a resounding “yes.” Thank you PhilArts Class of 2015, for showing me another aspect of how and why exactly the Department of Arts and Communication rocks.
*At the risk of oversimplification, can be seen as gender+dialect, meaning how one acts and communicates his/her gender through a set of characteristics. Traditionally, masculine genderlect is individualistic, status-oriented, and competitive, while feminine genderlect is nurturing and networking communication.