Public Relations in Kenya: A Youthful Career Becoming Gender ‘Insensitive' in Favor of Women?

Abstract

Public Relations, a budding profession attracting many youths in Kenya is growing at a very fast pace. The new ‘found' discipline has attracted many women who seem to dominate in almost all sectors of the Country's economy. The dominance is not only evident in the organizations in which they hold key positions, but also at the helm of the Country's professional body's leadership, the Public Relations Society of Kenya (PRSK). With the growing wave of women joining the profession, men have been left with no option but accept whatever else that is available. Having realized this developing trend, a study was carried out to ascertain the changing dynamics in a profession that was once dominated by men, the level of youthfulness of the practitioners, and the reasons that could have lead to such gender disparity in the new and emerging career. It further sought to establish whether there was a co-relation between their age, sex and their performance in the course of their engagement. To achieve this, data was collected from practicing public relations practitioners through semi-structured questionnaires administered to 150 registered members of Kenya's Public Relations Society (PRSK) who were sampled using a stratified random sampling technique on a calculated proportion of both sexes. Of the total number however, only 110 questionnaires were retrieved from the respondents. The study found that a large percentage of the PR practitioners were in their youthful age   majority being women.