GenderAvenger Susan Askew On Fortune.com
Where Are All the Women At Finance Conferences?
I am one of the 32% -- the 32% of the Wall Street Journal readers that are women. For many years, I have faithfully read the financial news and, not so faithfully, looked at the ads. But sometimes an oversized or provocative ad will catch my eye ... as in the case of one recent full-page splash for a private equity conference sponsored by Dow Jones. The ad prominently displayed the photos of 10 featured speakers. All men. Huh, I thought. What happened there?
Shortly after, another full-page ad in the Journal for its own Heard on the Street Live conference on "Investing in an Age of Easy Money" hosted by three male editors and featuring nine male speakers. Within days, a half-page ad appeared for Barron's "The Art of Successful Investing" conference. Ten speakers. One woman.
By this point, my incredulity was a bit strained. As the saying goes: Once is an anomaly. Twice is a coincidence. Three times is a pattern.