Women and Leadership in Public Relations and Communication Management: Developing a Rhizomatic Typology of Knowledge and Professional Development as an Ecological Radical Feminine Perspective

This chapter establishes the value of an ecological radical feminine perspective of women and leadership in public relations (PR) and communication management. It supports a rhizomatic typology of knowledge and professional development and embraces feminine sensibilities of growth, goodness, sustainability, well-being and humility as an ecosophy (wise society) of PR practice. Reluctance to move beyond 20th-century masculine notions of management, leadership, careers and success has frustrated the potential to create a thriving contemporary feminised PR profession. This penalises women’s investment in professional development and inhibits maturing of the practice by favouring androcentric career assumptions that “devalue the feminine.”