Accidentally, the workshop I’m part of at the conference ended up consisting of two dozen women and a single very quiet man.
I love all – female conferences because there’s no posturing, no grandstanding, no need to be careful around easily woundable egos. There are 3 artists here who’ve been talking to everybody for 3 days and never mentioned their art once. Nobody has brought up their title, tenure, the prestigious publishing house where they published their book or even if they’ve published a book. Nobody mentions their private life at all.
The whole thing has been extremely productive, respectful, and low-key.
Clarissa's Blog 
I love majority-female conferences too, and have been very lucky with one working group, which was mixed gender but had a very female, comfortable vibe – I currently conceputalise this as being more about the difference between Individualists (who are actually quite insecure, so have to brag and fight all the time, and who focus on their own career and brilliance at the expense of actual dialogue – some of them are very clever and do advance knowledge, but more despite than because of their individualism) and Collectivists (who regard academic knowledge as more of a shared playground than a battlefield, are modest about their own achievements and enthused by others’, and who are far more likely to just share out any ‘chores’ than need doing and get on with things rather than claiming Specialness to avoid them etc.) – in academe, or at least in my part of it, most Individualists are male, most Collectivists are female, and the best working environment is a group of collectivitists without any senior Individualists, which tends to manifest as a predominantly female group with a few quiet, pleasant males…
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I’m a passionate individualist and I detest any collectivizing practice, so it’s got to be something different that I’m enjoying here. 🙂
Female identity is not in any way linked to professional success (unfortunately), so egos don’t show up to female conferences. And it’s really easy to work with people who showed up without the ego that they are constantly trying to service.
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The people at the conference are happy with their institutions and/or haven’t judged the conference to be full of big-wigs looking for their next hire (like the MLA conference)? Nobody’s conducting actual interviews at this conference?
Female identity is not in any way linked to professional success (unfortunately), so egos don’t show up to female conferences.
Funny story. My mother will sometimes lament the lack of professional success I have and then immediately tie it to, “Men don’t want a wife who doesn’t have a job” when she really means “professional job that clears $100,000”. I know this because she’s creatively upgraded every single job I’ve had at every single age to sound more impressive to all of her friends and acquaintances and she would coach me on what to say before such gatherings. She also impressed to me that I should never tell any of these people that I was looking for any job when I was in between jobs because that was deeply embarrassing to her but I should definitely care greatly about their wonderful opinions.
The hilarious part of this is that she is no way professionally accomplished herself. She has never held a single job in her life that she’s had to apply for, that had a supervisor at any point, or that she’s had to be accountable to anyone in a serious professional way.
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Many people seem to be motivated almost entirely by the prospect of improving their status. I have always thought this was beyond silly. However, one longtime friend says this this is because, as a Professor, I already have high status, and that I would understand if I were not. I don’t get it, I fear.
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I agree completely that it’s very enjoyable to be at am event that is about scholarship and not status. I’m bored by status games and I always have been.
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I’m glad that somewhere there exist majority-female conferences where the discussion does not fall straight to “you can be in this profession and still be a mother!” My only experience with an all-female conference was one that was supposed to be focused on getting girls into physics. That’s pretty much all it was about. There was very little talk about research except during the poster presentations, and those were brought by the students, not the speakers.
Granted, that particular conference was directed toward students. But that kind of experience can really spoil the thought of majority-female conferences for a student.
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I’m happy to report that I don’t know anything about anybody’s family status at this conference. And that makes me very happy. 🙂
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