"The Feel-Good Female Solidarity Machine"

"If Tina Brown, the celebrated former editor of Vanity Fair and the New Yorker, is there, you know you’ve reached the summit, literally. Her annual Women in the World Summit, a venture she launched in 2010, has done so well that it sold out 2,500-seat venues four years running and expanded overseas, showing that it was possible to monetize female rage. People pay up to $300 per day to attend, and the summit was profitable from its very first year, thanks to sponsorships by such blue-chip backers as Toyota Motor, Dove, Google, and MasterCard. October’s inaugural Women in the World London was packed morning to night with activists from around the world reliving their struggles, movie stars sharing life secrets, politicians, and royalty. During breaks, women milled around a crowded lounge, nibbling on popcorn and tweeting...

In what may be a sign that the branding of women’s issues is immune to irony, the National Football League hosts its first-ever Women’s Summit during Super Bowl week on Feb. 4. Coming off a string of player domestic abuse scandals and cheerleader lawsuits over fair pay, it’s called In the Huddle to Advance Women in Sport, and it features Serena Williams and Condoleezza Rice...

You often leave with a rosy glow, a sense of resolve, and a commitment to do more, for other women and for yourself. But then you return to your desk, probably next to a higher-paid male co-worker, and the old, familiar malaise sets in. There was no discussion of changing policies or lobbying members of Congress. No e-mail list to stay in touch and organize. In the end, one wonders if the explosion of these events is a reflection of how far women have come or proof that they haven’t made much progress at all. Why, in spite of all the energy these conferences generate, are women still just … talking?"

http://www.bloomberg.com/features/2016-feel-good-female-solidarity-machine/

I have totally been to mini-versions of these, and I know exactly that feeling and that walking-away and that next-day-no-changes thing.