Advertising is run by “white men” who generally share the dismissive attitude to gender equality voiced by Saatchi & Saatchi’s chairman, who was suspended after saying it was “not an issue”, according to one of the industry’s leading female voices.

Cindy Gallop, former president of global ad agency Bartle Bogle Hegarty (BBH), said Kevin Roberts was merely expressing the views those at the top of the industry hold privately.

She said that other white men in similar senior positions pay lip service to equality but fail to take action to achieve it. The world’s six top advertising groups are all run by men.

“They have to pay lip service to diversity, but they are talking it and they are not walking the walk because they see no need to whatsoever,” said Gallop. “They are sitting very pretty, they have gigantic salaries, share options, expense accounts. Why would they ever want to rock the boat?”

However, Gallop said that Roberts should not be used as a lightning rod to stop people from looking at the industry’s wider problems. “Coming back from this is very difficult. [But] I really want not to see one man who says what the rest are thinking become the sole lightning rod. I want to see action taken at the top and all the way though. That means that it’s not only kneejerk responses.”

Roberts, who is also head coach at Publicis, parent company of Saatchi & Saatchi and BBH, told Business Insider last week that he spent “no time” on gender equality and many women did not want to take on senior management roles because, like some men, they were happier doing work on lower rungs of the ladder.

He also commented on Gallop’s campaigning for gender equality, saying she was “making up a lot of the stuff to create a profile, and to take applause, and to get on a soap[box]”. Gallop said the suggestion that many women were happy not to rise to the highest levels was “absolute fucking bollocks”.

Kate Stanners, global chief creative officer at Saatchi & Saatchi, told Radio 4’s Today programme on Monday that women did want the most senior roles and that discrimination was an industrywide problem. She said Robert had upset a huge number of employees, and that greater encouragement was needed to help counteract gender inequality.

Tamara Ingram, worldwide chief executive of ad agency J Walter Thompson, said: “Diversity is part of our values, culture and business strategy. We passionately believe that diversity of talent leads to diversity of thinking and better creative ideas. Many of our offices are led by women, including some of the most important in our network and in places where women’s success can be especially difficult to achieve such as New York, Buenos Aires and Cairo.”

However, Ingram also said there was still much to do to improve gender equality in advertising. “The way we recruit is central to diversity. We seek different talent in different places, level the playing field through blind recruitment, and insist on a diverse candidate slate for open positions.”

Tracy De Groose, chief executive of Dentsu Aegis Network UK, also took issue with Robert’s suggestion that women are not promoted because they prioritised happiness, and said that it was in the interest of the ad industry to reflect its audience.

She said: “Of course happiness is important, but it is a low benchmark for any business to set for their employees, regardless of gender ... in the marketing and advertising world, where I found my feet, it is staggering to consider that women drive approximately 80% of consumer spending but represent less than a third of senior positions.”

Roberts was suspended by Saatchi owner Publicis on Friday. Announcing his suspension to staff, Maurice Lévy, the chief executive of Publicis, said the company would not tolerate anyone who “does not value the importance of inclusion”.

He wrote: “It is for the gravity of these statements that Kevin Roberts has been asked to take a leave of absence from Publicis Groupe, effective immediately. As a member of the directoire [executive board], it will ultimately be the Publicis Groupe supervisory board’s duty to further evaluate his standing.”

Publicis on Monday said it would not comment further on the suspension, and would not say when a decision would be made on Roberts’ future at the firm. However, it emerged on Monday that in May Publicis had spent $3m (£2.27m) to settle a class-action gender discrimination lawsuit at its PR subsidiary MSLGroup in New York.

According to Business Insider, which unearthed the suit, Roberts had nothing to do with the case and a spokesperson for Publicis said the speed with which it had moved to suspend him was not related. Gallop said she was pleasantly surprised by how quickly and forcefully Publicis had acted, but the industry had repeatedly failed to act when other high profile examples of discrimination were exposed.

Citing recent allegations against Gustavo Martinez, the chief executive of the agency JWT, who is said to have called black people “monkeys”, said he “hate[s] those fucking Jews” and told a female employee that he wanted to rape her in the bathroom, Gallop said the industry repeatedly treated cases as one-offs.

She said: “Maurice Lévy, at the association of ad agencies, took a lot of flak ... He citied [Martinez] as an isolated example of one man, that it was not endemic. What I am concerned about is this is not about one bad apple, it’s about stopping the rot across the industry.”