A rare slight then and now: creative Peggy Olson shows her ideas in AMC's Mad Men.

It’s one of the many flaws of my character that I tend to avoid TV shows that everyone is talking about. Somehow it compromises my viewing pleasure to be part of some giant national couch potato hour. It makes me feel a little sullied – like I’m giving in to the forces of hype. And so I deny myself.

The most shaming thing about this flaw is that I don’t even have the courage of my convictions. I almost always succumb to curiosity and watch the thing anyway, months after the cultural wave has passed. It happened with The Office. It happened with 24. It happened with The Wire. And it’s just happened with Mad Men.

It’s my new favorite thing. I love it, just like everybody else did three years ago. And you know what the most interesting thing about the show is for this viewer? It’s not how different the world of advertising it portrays is to the one we inhabit today. It’s how similar it is – and not in a good way.

OK, so none of us creatives go to work in a $5,000 suit or has a corner office with 100-year-old Scotch in the filing cabinet. But in one, crucial respect – despite 40 years of cultural upheaval, revolution and social change – we’re still mired in the 1960s: female creatives. Or, rather, lack of them.

There may be more than in Don Draper’s day. But at a senior level? Heading up agencies, chairing judging panels, setting the creative agenda? There is a conspicuous, shameful absence; unmistakable but unexpressed, like Salvatore’s sexuality in season one.

I sometimes hear a view, even from some female creatives themselves, that women are somehow ill-suited to the cut and thrust of the advertising world. Try telling that to a female headteacher. Or consultant surgeon. Or social worker.

The irony is you don’t need to look far for female talent. In all aspects of the arts, from photography to fine art to filmmaking to TV to music to literature, female creativity has, if not in all cases an equal voice, a powerful voice creating world-leading, agenda-setting, brave, subversive, funny, challenging, award-winning work.

So, if it’s not lack of talent or temperament, what is it? Why do the female applicants get fewer the more senior the role? Are creative women being deliberately held back, or do they just not want to work in advertising? Either or both could be true, and either or both should be a source of shame and a motivation for change.

Because if 50% of the population isn’t inspired enough by what we’re doing to want to do it themselves, that’s a failure to do our jobs. And if, once they get there they find that despite their talent, they can’t progress, that’s plain old-fashioned Mad Men-style discrimination.

It’s not just about what’s right. It’s about creating better work. Because if agencies are missing out on 50% of the world’s creativity, how can we deliver work that’s the best it can be? Q

Nick Bailey is creative director at AKQA in Amsterdam. Bailey delivered a talk as part of a session called Manifesto at Boards Summit Europe highlighting the exemplary contribution by women to the art world. Video can be found at summit.boardsmag.com/europe.