I was at a major public relations event recently, a big celebration of success in our industry. There were about 60% women, 40% men. I saw one Asian, and as far as I could tell, no one with a disability.

The public relations industry has a big problem. When I was President of the Institute last year I appointed a colleague to the Executive Board with the specific responsibility of ‘doing something' about the ‘diversity issue'. I have now taken over that role and we have a diversity group, a website, a dedicated member of staff and an issues-raising agenda. These are good first steps.

However, we have along way to go. We have no research which gives us even the basic facts on the ethnicity, age, social background, sexual orientation or disability of public relations practitioners in the UK. We do have some anecdotal material:

	Black and Asian candidates are not flooding into our industry, partly because of the image of the industry itself, but partly because there is a belief that there are barriers to promotion
	There is some evidence that older graduates find it more difficult to secure a first job that ‘traditional' graduates
	Public relations still attracts middle-class people, although there is some evidence that candidates from working class backgrounds are now entering the profession and doing well
	There are quite a number of gay and lesbian practitioners, with Public Affairs seeming to be an area that has a quite good representation of gay men
	The number of disabled practitioners is minute

If we are going to make some genuine strides in diversity our industry needs to ask itself some hard questions. How can we hope to be genuinely knowledgeable of and gain the respect of the various stakeholder groups we purport to work with on behalf of organisations and clients if we don't recruit from them? Are they good enough to talk to, but not good enough to work with? So when we are recruiting to our smart consultancies or our in-house departments, do we really recruit on merit and to add richness to our team, or do we recruit ‘the acceptable face of PR' to suit our clients or our Board directors? Would we be brave enough to put up a disabled spokesperson for our organisation or client – or would we think that would present the wrong image?

Lots of bold words and platitudes about diversity, but as far as the reality goes, we are not even in the starting blocks.

Anne Gregory FCIPR is Professor of Public Relations, and Director of the Centre for Public Relations Studies at Leeds Metropolitan University. Anne is also a Past President of the CIPR.