Women’s Seminars Spring Up Again, Ruffling Feathers : Workplace: The Southland conferences--one in Irvine, one just held in Brea and one in San Bernardino--aim toward some of the problems that women in business still face. But some activists are critical.
Management experts call it a glass ceiling--an invisible barrier keeping all but a few women from reaching leadership positions in the nation’s leading corporations. Charlene Walker, owner of a Tustin career consulting firm called “Women’s Focus,” sees the problem in more concrete terms.
She points to salary studies of women in 1989 and in 1979 that show no significant increases after inflation is considered. “Women are moving laterally, not upwards,” Walker said. “We know this is happening; now what are we going to do about it?”
This question has led to management counseling, books and workshops on the special problems that women face in the workplace.
Concern about these problems is widespread enough that three separate groups have either scheduled or held conferences for business women this month, each hoping its first conference will become an annual event.
Seminars at the conferences will deal with such issues as building financial independence, negotiating salaries and hiring the right people. Survival strategies for the working mother, serving as a mentor to other women and sexual harassment are also on the agenda.
With all this attention, one might think women are finally where they want to be, with money and influence enough that conference organizers see in them a viable market.
The Southern California conferences reflect a national outpouring of events aimed at business women, said Sharon Hadary, executive director of the National Foundation for Women Business Owners in Washington. Women will make up 47% of the work force and 50% of the business owners by the end of the decade, Hadary predicts.
“We’re finding a lot of corporations want to be associated with this growing economic force,” she said. “Women are the new customers, the new vendors, the new suppliers.”
The Irvine Chamber of Commerce and Irvine Valley College hope to raise $50,000 for themselves by sponsoring the Orange County Women’s Conference, which begins Monday. Business woman Heidi Sammons, who staged the California Women’s Conference in Brea last week, hopes to break even this year and begin making a profit next year. And the Inland Empire Business Journal has scheduled a conference for May 18 in San Bernardino, an event that Business Journal executives hope will boost its standing in the community.
Such conferences are not new, but they had fallen out of favor in Orange County. For six years, beginning in 1983, then-State Sen. William Campbell sponsored a gathering in the Anaheim area. But in 1988, he was accused of overpaying his wife and staff to organize the event, and the conference closed the following year.
This month’s conferences have also ruffled some feathers. One woman invited to speak at the Irvine gathering said she was put off that the group plans a seminar on cosmetic surgery, which she considers a superficial aspect of a woman’s life.
Molly Yard, president of the National Organization for Women, said the Irvine organizers also have blundered by scheduling the conference at the Irvine Marriott Hotel.
“The Marriott family has put a lot of money into candidates opposed to the ERA (equal rights amendment),” Yard said in an telephone interview. “I am very tempted to telegram Linda Ellerbee, who has spoken for NOW, and tell her she’s walking into forbidden territory.”
Ellerbee, one of the first women anchors in broadcast journalism, is a keynote speaker for the Irvine event, along with actress Mariette Hartley and Kelly Lange, co-anchor for KNBC-TV, Channel 4, in Los Angeles. That celebrity lineup has come in for criticism, as well, especially in contrast to the group speaking at the San Bernardino conference, including Gloria Allred, an active feminist and president of the Women’s Equal Rights Legal Defense and Education Fund, and Judith Briles, a well-known management consultant.
“I’m sure Mariette Hartley is a very interesting person, but why is she talking to women about business?” said Rieva Lesonsky, editor of Entrepreneur and Entrepreneurial Woman magazines, which have loaned their names to the San Bernardino conference. “It’s probably the Southern California focus on Hollywood.”
Others disapprove of the prices. The Irvine conference, the most expensive, is charging $195 for a day and a half of seminars.
Nina Hull, chair of the Orange County Commission on the Status of Women, contrasts that with her office’s information sessions for women who want to start businesses in their homes. The price: $25, which includes lunch.
“I would like to see the cost brought down because it excludes a large segment of our society of women who really need help,” Hull said. “We tend of think of Orange County as the gold coast of Southern California, and that’s just not the case. There are pockets of poverty here.”
She said housing costs, especially for single mothers, health care and prenatal care are important topics for many Orange County women. “There are a lot of very divisive issues, and they’ve steered away from them,” she said.
Anna McFarlin, president of Irvine Valley College and chair of the conference’s advisory committee, said the conference was not designed to deal with all women’s issues.
“We’re not dealing with very difficult issues of abortion and rape and all that difficult stuff; it wasn’t designed to be that way,” she said. “This conference is very much a self-help conference as opposed to dealing with political issues.”
Christina Garant, a public relations manager for Southern California Edison, has signed up for the Irvine event, of which her company is a sponsor. She will attend seminars on oral and written communication, dealing with the media, management skills and menopause.
“I thought it was really neat they’re offering health seminars as well,” said Garant, 44. “Oftentimes, when you’re busy with your career, you forget you need to keep a mix of that.”
Apparently enough women share Garant’s feelings to make women-only conferences attractive.
Sammons, organizer of the Brea gathering, had run conferences every six months for four years for business people who wanted to sharpen job skills, but she changed her focus to women-only programs this spring. “I’m getting a lot more phone calls,” she said. “Women are coming into more power and money, and I think people are trying to target women more.”
The San Bernardino conference is one of three or four that the Inland Empire Business Journal will run this year, said Douglas Tucker, executive vice president. To pick speakers and arrange seminars, the Journal staff selected 25 business women in San Bernardino and Riverside counties--the so-called Inland Empire.
While some argue that conference topics such as “The Irritable Bladder,” which is presumably about bladder infections, have little to do with whether women learn to network, Ellerbee said she sees nothing wrong with mixing the two. At a recent women’s conference that she attended, exhibitor booths were selling computer software and lipstick side by side.
“That’s what’s really interesting and kind of neat about women; we are all of those things,” she said. “And frankly, I’m more likely to have time to buy lipstick at a conference like that than I am to go shopping.”
WOMEN GET DOWN TO BUSINESS
Three women’s conferences, each with ambitions of becoming an annual event, were scheduled this month in Orange and San Bernardino counties.
Orange County Women’s Conference
Who: Irvine Chamber of Commerce, Irvine Valley College Foundation, Women’s Choice Health Pavilion of Irvine Medical Center.
When: Monday, May 6, all day, and Tuesday, May 7, until midafternoon.
Why: To hear from “business and community leaders on . . . career development, personal and professional empowerment, entrepreneurial women, and health and wellness.”
Cost: $195 for both days, advance registration.
Where: Irvine Marriott hotel.
Speakers: Mariette Hartley, actress and author; Linda Ellerbee, journalist and author; Kelly Lange, broadcast journalist; Ellen Kreidman, author; Sheffra Williams-Sam, author.
For more information: (714) 660-9112.
1991 California Women’s Conference
Who: Heidi Sammons, owner of a Buena Park business called California Women’s Conference.
When: May 3 and 4.
Why: “If you have felt stressed out, unorganized or unsure of work, relationships or life.”
Cost: $80-a-day.
Where: Embassy Suites Hotel, Brea.
Speakers: Barbara DeAngelis, radio talk-show host and author; Debi Thomas, Olympic ice skater; Louise Pomeroy, mother and entrepreneur; Peter McWilliams, author.
First Women & Business Expo 1991
Who: Inland Empire Business Journal, Entrepreneur and Entrepreneurial Women magazines.
When: Saturday, May 18, all day, beginning at 7 a.m.
Why: This event “will focus on women as leaders and the challenges each faces toward realizing her fullest potential.”
Cost: $79 for reservations made before Friday.
Where: Maruko Hotel & Convention Center, San Bernardino.
Speakers: Gloria Allred, feminist; Bobbie Gee, lecturer; Patricia Fripp, lecturer; Judith Briles, author and management consultant.
For more information: (714) 391-1015.
