Graduate students suggested ways to succeed in workplaces dominated by men at a forum Sunday held by the Women’s Business Connection at the UCLA Anderson School of Management.
About 200 attendees came to the third annual Anderson Women’s Summit, including students at the School of Management, alumni and women currently in the workforce.
Connie Woo, vice president of the Anderson Women’s Summit and a graduate student at the School of Management, said the conference was an opportunity for women to discuss leadership and sexism in business.
Last year, several reports described the Anderson School of Management as inhospitable to women faculty. Woo said the conference addressed the School of Management’s culture in the context of the core problems facing women in business.
“Anderson as a whole is a very collaborative community,” Woo said. “There is no doubt about that, and when I think about women in Anderson I think there is a lot that can be done in terms of building the female community with everyone.”
The conference featured panels about common challenges for women, including combating sexism in hiring and promotion decisions, and learning how to define one’s individual version of success. Graduate students in the School of Management moderated the panels.
Anderson Women, the School of Management alumni chapter of Women’s Business Connection, organized a stress management workshop that was held during the conference.
Woo said holding the summit in collaboration with Anderson Women was a change from previous years, and that it provided another outlet for networking and support.
Woo said she hopes the conference helped attendees find a community of women they can rely on for networking.
“The advantage it presents … is having women feel like they are connected to other people that have the same challenges,” Woo said.
Woo said the conference was not only challenge-based, though. She said it was focused on constructive, positive change in business women’s lives as well.
Daniela Castillo, a graduate student at the School of Management, said she was glad the conference addressed problems of wage equality between men and women in business, since the topic has the potential to affect her in the future.
A Pew Research Center study published in 2013 found that U.S. women earned 84 cents for every $1 that men made in 2012.
Carly Silverman, a graduate student in the School of Management, said she had never been to a conference dedicated to helping women advance in the workplace, and the open environment was a nice place to learn how to advocate for herself in the workplace.
Silverman also said she thinks having women with different experiences in business speak to the audience lent credibility to the advice the conference offered.
Michelle Dennedy, vice president and chief privacy officer at Intel Security, discussed her experiences working with women and men in a large corporation as the keynote speaker at the conference.
She talked about her personal experiences of clashing with co-workers, including dealing with sexist comments men made about women in offices she worked in. She advised the women present at the conference to advocate for themselves.
“It’s not just either or, it’s not just men versus women,” Dennedy said. “We are designed to work together.”