Virtually, Still A Boys Club

Virtually, Still A Boys Club

Digital conferences don’t level the field for women. They might even make it worse.

BY ERICA LACENTRA | CONTRIBUTING WRITER, NATIONAL MORTGAGE PROFESSIONAL

With COVID-19 putting a damper on in-person events this year, many conferences turned to a virtual alternative. With virtual exhibit halls, chat and video-based networking, live or recorded speaking sessions and many of the other hallmarks a live event offers, the thought is that virtual conferences can be a just as good as the real thing and achieve many of the same goals for sponsors and attendees alike.

Well, maybe.

While I truly admire the effort of conference coordinators to pivot and still try to offer value to their clients, what I have found (and commiserated about with numerous folks in the industry) is there really is no substitute for the real in-person event. However, I would be lying if I said that there weren’t some real advantages to a virtual event, and many of those advantages go beyond simply being able to generate business from the comfort of your own home.

As someone who has worked in the mortgage industry for just over seven years now, and traveled to more conferences than I can count, there is something invigorating about attending live events. Nothing beats being able to get away from the office, look for fresh ideas and inspiration on the trade show floor, meet with old friends, and cultivate new business.

However, being a woman in the industry adds a whole different level of pre-event mental preparation.

The boys’ club mentality that exists within the mortgage industry means that before I go to the trade show floor every morning, I prep myself to be ready to handle any attendees or fellow exhibitors that are rude, demeaning, or inappropriate. I still have to remain professional, avoid being in any unsafe situations such as walking or sitting alone even at trade show sanctioned events, and navigate a multitude of other situations that no male colleague would ever have to worry about. To say it can be exhausting is an understatement, and there are many times when I question if the pros of attending truly outweigh the cons.

SEARCHING FOR E-EQUALITY

This is precisely why virtual trade shows and conferences appealed to me. Being in a virtual exhibit booth with other members of your company meant there was little to no chance of an attendee treating you like a piece of meat and being inappropriate or harassing you. Even if they were, you could simply boot them from the video chat, a luxury you don’t have in person.

After attending several virtual conferences though, I realized that they, too, posed unique challenges for women sponsors and attendees. Mainly that the “men know better” mentality that exists in our industry has also pervaded this platform. Attendees were not only not talking to me or the other female staff members at our virtual booth, they were completely ignoring us and going straight to male team members to start a one-on-one conversation.

Now you’re probably thinking, that’s crazy, it’s got to be in your head. I assure you this is not a case of paranoia. I have attended about a half dozen virtual events this year, and while it is more apparent at some events than others, it is happening. It is something that my colleagues, both male and female, noticed and commented on at a number of different shows.

Take the last virtual event I attended for example: about halfway through the day, I checked in with my fellow co-workers to see how things were going and the responses could not have been more drastically different. My female team members asked if there were issues with the platform, and if their computers were glitching, because that made more sense than not getting a single response, no matter how many times they sent messages to greet visitors at our booth.

On the flip side, my male team members said conversations were great, they were getting direct messages from a lot of viable leads and looked forward to seeing what happened with these potential clients. There was nothing wrong with the virtual platform. The problem was with the biases of our booth visitors. Initially I shrugged it off and tried to justify what was happening. Maybe booth visitors were interacting with the guys at our booth because they were loan officers. They wanted to get right to the people that could help them. That made sense. Even if some of the women at our booth had seniority at the company, they still had marketing job titles. But then I had an interaction where I couldn’t justify what was happening anymore.

BAD ASSUMPTIONS

We got a booth visitor, who I greeted when he entered, and was subsequently ignored. Not a problem, probably just a pop-in to the booth. However, it turned out this particular visitor was looking to speak with someone in our marketing department, and not just anyone. They were looking for the head of marketing.

Now the only reason I found this out was because they directly messaged, you guessed it, one of my male colleagues at the booth, asking who they should contact. Even after my male colleague directed this visitor to me, when he reached out, his direct message to me inquired who was really in charge of RCN’s marketing. Needless to say, I, the director of marketing, wasn’t interested in what he had to sell.

Of all of the potential challenges of participating in a virtual conference, I did not think my biggest obstacle would be sexism. Especially now when it is already challenging enough to try to garner business without live events. At the end of the day, I’m just as qualified as my male counterparts and I am attending these events to achieve the same goal, to bring more business in the door.

I’d like to say I had an easy and immediate solution to spark change, but this is a deeply rooted problem that exists in all facets of our industry. All I can do now is encourage others to call attention to situations like this and demand better, as I will continue to do.

Erica LaCentra is director of marketing for RCN Capital.