17395: Disempowerment Disembowelment.

 

Advertising Age published a perspective from a White woman advocating for fighting in Adland’s “new era of disempowerment.”

 

Technically, it should be labeled renewed era of disempowerment—as it’s really the revivals of gender inequality and systemic racism.

 

Hey, you know the DEIBA+ dream is being deferred, disrespected, and denied when even White women are feeling the abandonment of faux commitment to the cause.

 

How to keep fighting in advertising’s new era of disempowerment

 

By Mindy Goldberg

 

Let’s just say it: advertising is in a new era of disempowerment, and if you’re a woman, a person of color or someone who actually cares about the creative work, you’re feeling it.

 

This isn’t subtle anymore. It’s about wielding financial power, and nobody’s pretending otherwise. Business ethics and respect have left the building at the corporate level, and the rest of us are in survival mode—watching a political climate shift in ways that will cost people jobs, benefits and ground that took decades to gain. And yes, it will land hardest on the people who can least afford it. It always does.

 

I started a production company in 1989. I’ve been a woman in this industry for over 30 years, and I want to be clear: it was never easy. There was always some version of the same deal on the table: stroke the right egos, do the work, learn the craft, be capable and warm and non-threatening all at once—and maybe, maybe you’d advance. The business was 99% white, and women were largely expected to support the men in charge.

 

In the last decade, you could feel momentum building toward change. Initiatives like Free the Bid opened doors and created real opportunity for women and other underrepresented voices. For a moment, it felt like history was bending in a new direction. But the progress didn’t stick.

 

We knew the prejudice was there. It knew we knew. There was an unspoken arrangement: keep your head down, and it would keep its voice down.

 

That arrangement is over.

 

What’s shifted isn’t just policy. It’s permission. The disrespect that once operated in whispers no longer bothers to whisper. Look at who is still at the top. It’s familiar. A lot of what passed for progress didn’t run very deep.

 

For those of us on the creative production side, there’s another layer.

 

The actual craft, the whole thing this industry claims to value, is being financially and ethically gutted by people who see it as a line item. As budgets tighten and timelines compress, risk is pushed downstream. “Efficiency” at the top is made possible by uncompensated labor further down the chain. We’re not talking about a few extra hours. It’s weeks of unbillable work—bidding cities, holding vendors, calling crews, building schedules—before a job is awarded, before a director is recommended, sometimes before it’s killed altogether.

 

Business practices have never been less efficient.

 

Efficiency is easy when someone else absorbs the cost.

 

Production companies like mine—built over decades on talent, relationships and creative commitment—are watching decision-making shift away from creative leadership and toward the bottom line. Ethical business practices are seen as old-fashioned. The soul of the work is an inconvenience.

 

So. What do we do with that?

 

Here’s what I know after 30-plus years of building something on my own terms: you cannot outsource your values. Not to a company. Not to a movement. Not to a political moment that may look completely different in 18 months. What holds is what you actually do.

 

The hiring decision.

 

The pushback against unfair business practices.

 

The moment in the room where you could stay quiet—and don’t.

 

That’s the work.

 

Toni Morrison said it simply: “If you have some power, then your job is to empower somebody else.”

 

That’s still the job.

 

Mindy Goldberg founded Epoch Films in 1989 with a mission to introduce filmmakers with a unique perspective to the advertising world.