Women in the creative industries are still earning less and being passed over for promotion despite ongoing campaigning to achieve equality. This affects wellbeing and general confidence, manifesting in a biased view of women through marketing and advertising. Less than 3% of adverts depict women in leadership roles, being intelligent or having a sense of humour.
Leading female comedy community Funny Women launched HERlarious last year with the aim of changing the narrative by encouraging more women to take the creative lead in agencies or marketing teams and not settle for the ‘housekeeping’ roles. This has centred around a series of events aimed at the creative industries with a mix of workshops, panel discussion and endorphin-inducing live comedy.
The next event in the HERlarious Comedy for Creatives series takes place on Wednesday 13th November hosted at the UK headquarters of LinkedIn in central London.
“We are delighted to host HERlarious in partnership with the IAA UK and Mediatel and we are very grateful to our friends at LinkedIn for hosting the event,” said Fredrik Borestrom, president of the IAA UK.
“As the leading international trade body in the UK market we are passionate about providing an environment for people to network and support each other in person.”
HERlarious – Comedy, Wellbeing and Confidence for Creatives – will explore some of the issues that more commonly affect women more than men, like working alone, returning to work after caring for family and feeling side-lined in the creative workspace.
This is achieved with workshops aimed at building confidence, exploring creativity and facing fear, all facilitated by a team of female performers, writers, content creators and directors with first-hand experience of the comedy industry.
Delegates take part in two workshops followed by a lively panel discussion about how we can change the narrative with some very strong and funny women including Victoria Hargreaves aka “The crafty fox” who inadvertently became a social media influencer after getting bored on maternity leave and oversharing details of both her life and her anatomy.
Victoria will be in conversation with journalist and broadcaster, Harriet Minter, host of Badass Women’s Hour on TalkRadio and former editor of the Guardian Women in Leadership, and Laura Smyth the recently crowned Stage Award winner in this year’s Funny Women Awards. The evening culminates in some brilliant live comedy featuring Laura and some of her contemporaries
“As an older woman in the workplace still following my passion for comedy and creativity, I have worked my way through so many life events including divorce, pregnancy, bereavement, caring and menopause,” explains Lynne Parker the founder and CEO of Funny Women.
“My innately feminine sense of humour has seen me through the difficult times and HERlarious brings together the collective experiences of some of the brilliant women I work with in the comedy world and beyond. It is always magical and I look forward to meeting you on the 13 November.”
Click here for full details and tickets.
