Picture a horizontal line of 4-inch stilettos, dangling at eye level

February 18, 2016 7:00 PM

The women's empowerment conference industry (sl Bloomberg)
posted by Lycaste (9 comments total)

I was pleased to read about what Sallie Krawchek is doing these days. What she said was not wrong.
posted by Ruki at 7:12 PM on February 18, 2016

“I wonder—if men just sat down and let women do things, maybe some amazing things would happen.”
posted by johnnyace at 9:35 PM on February 18, 2016

There's a local women's empowerment conference that sends me a flier every year, and I am mystified. It costs $115, and this year the keynote is being given by a humorous motivational speaker. I would pay $115 to get out of hearing a talk by a humorous motivational speaker, to be honest. I can't even figure out what the point of the conference is supposed to be.

But the article mentioned the Grace Hopper conference for women in computing, and that seems like a different beast to me. If you're a seriously underrepresented person in a field, it might be nice once a year to go to a place where you're not the only person like you in the room and where you don't constantly have to explain that no, you're not in HR or there tagging along with your boyfriend, you're an actual computer scientist. Plus, there's a job fair, which is a way for companies to increase the diversity of their potential hiring pool.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 6:50 AM on February 19, 2016 [5 favorites]

It was so sweet of Bloomberg to replace their usual royal blue emphasis and hyperlink styles with pink for the article about the ladies.
posted by aught at 7:21 AM on February 19, 2016 [6 favorites]

My industry has one of these. At the one I went to, one of the speakers was Camila Batmanghelidj - whose charity has since been closed down under mysterious circumstances.
posted by mippy at 7:44 AM on February 19, 2016

I am not clear what Camila Batmanghelidj is trying to convey with her personal sartorial style ... but it's something.
posted by theorique at 8:57 AM on February 19, 2016

Yes, I've seen her twice in real life (the other time was in Space NK, oddly enough) and she does look amazing.
posted by mippy at 9:05 AM on February 19, 2016

Damn, I was hoping for a picture of women breaking their 4 inch stilettos chains.
posted by a humble nudibranch at 2:54 PM on February 19, 2016

This seems unnecessarily mean-spirited. So many women's conferences and yet they're still so feminine! Oh my! The comment about men's conferences being called just "conferences" (and likely with less scrutiny) is spot on.
posted by divabat at 5:40 PM on February 19, 2016