MAD MONEY // Global Pay Index

Inside the creative department

The paycheck is the [in]visible consequence of how male-dominated creative departments remain worldwide.

Talent has
no gender.

12.6%

of creative director roles worldwide are held by women, despite women making up close to half the industry's overall workforce.

Creative Equals / Muse by Clio, global

~1%

of advertising agencies worldwide have a female founder.

Oranje Creative / B&T, global

22%

of senior media-buying leadership roles worldwide are held by women — the other room where campaign decisions get made.

GroupM, 2023, global

53–58%

of the global workforce at major holding companies is women — WPP 58%, Havas 57%, dentsu 53%. Women aren't scarce coming in; they just don't rise into creative leadership at the same rate.

Company disclosures, 2024–25, global

63%

of Cannes Lions' "See It Be It" alumnae are now Creative Director level or above — 150+ women & non-binary creatives from 44 countries since 2014.

Cannes Lions, global program

of the world's 100 most award-winning Chief Creative Officers are women — and only 13% of the top 300 most-awarded creative leaders overall.

The Big Won Study, via The Drum

What the drop-off looks like, close up: interviews with creative leaders in São Paulo describe a persistent "boys' club" and a motherhood penalty shaping who advances (Journal of Gender Studies, 2025). In the U.S., sustained sponsorship programs took women's share of creative director roles from 3% to 29% over roughly a decade (The 3% Movement). And in 2023, Ogilvy's Liz Taylor became the first woman ever to top The Drum's World Creative Rankings CCO league table — a first, not yet a trend, but proof the ceiling moves when someone actually pushes on it.

Numbers,
still do.

Inside the creative department

City files

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