Why TEDWomen Conference Was a Cause for Celebration

The Monterey coastal fog mists the Indigo Girls as they play an acoustic version of Share the Moon.  Given that I have spent the past 16 months directing a film about the dearth of women in tech, this audience of 95% women is highly unusual.  I look around.  I see women in their teens dancing with their moms, I see womenofacertainage swaying with their arms around each other.  I see women smiling, engaging, networking, singing, celebrating.  Women,  who in this moment, are unencumbered by the nag of micro aggressions, by stereotype threat, by being in the shadow.  These are women who achieve, who disrupt, who make, and who create.  These are women I admire and I want to meet.  

And it’s not just that I am star-struck by Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin, who are dancing, hands in the air, to Power of Two a few yards in front of me, or because I know that the group to my right are highly influential women in the world of film financing. I want to meet these women because they inspire me.  They are women who have found a way to break free of stereotypes, break through glass ceilings, break into industries that typically marginalize women.  They have come together to the TED Women Conference to impart their knowledge, to share their accomplishments and to offer advice to those of us who strive to leave our mark.

There was talk in the CODE: Debugging the Gender Gap Workshops which Producer Staci Hartman and I ran at TED Woman earlier that day, that women do not always support women.  That our culture tends to pit women against each other - to compete for the one token spot in the board room, the rare c-level promotion, or evasive VC funding to women led startups.  Women in the workforce do not often take time to mentor, to encourage female co-workers or to reach out to subordinates on the rise. In conducting interviews for CODE: Debugging the Gender Gap documentary, I’ve learned that women have to work harder than men to maintain the same standings as their male co-workers.  Women who work in positions they covet or from which they hope to rise, work with their heads down, grinding away, because they know what they have to do to overcome other people’s perceptions of their abilities.  They have to work harder to prove their worth. It must be exhausting.  But tonight they are not working - they are celebrating their femininity.  They are celebrating each other.

Is it reverse discrimination to  have a conference called TED Women?  Perhaps.  Men are welcome to attend; just like woman can attend TechCrunch Disrupt, if they dare.  But why do individual genders seek isolation?  Why is it important to have conferences like TED Women?  Why do all of these women gathering, dancing, singing and enjoying each other’s company, seem so happy and comfortable and alive?  Because they feel safe.  Women thrive in environments where we feel appreciated and valued.  Call it ambient belonging: we thrive when we feel comfortable in our environment.    It’s also the law of stereotype threat.  When women are confident that  they will succeed and thrive, they will indeed, succeed and thrive.  And guess what?  Adding women into the mix  - onto your coding team or into the board room, to leadership positions - increases your bottom line.  This is not a gender issue for the sake of gender parity.  This is about diversity and what diverse perspectives can do to improve your company, your product, your productivity.  Because diverse perspective create products and services that serve a greater breadth of humanity.  

The fog continues to blow in, but the crowd is warm as they sing along to Closer to Fine.  Jane and Lily are now on stage, dancing, radiating as beacons of strength, of wisdom, of feminism.  Amy and Emily’s lyrics echo through the plaza and I think, wow, I’m glad I’ve crawled up on this shore.

“There's more than one answer to these questions. Pointing me in a crooked line. And the less I seek my source for some definitive.  Closer I am to fine”

• Indio Girls