Weekend OWL conference looks at women's role in the workplace

About 60 Princeton students and visitors from other universities gathered Saturday morning to celebrate the achievements of working women.

The Organization of Women Leaders held its second annual conference, titled "Breaking the Glass Ceiling." The event featured a full day of speakers on how women have made inroads in their professions.

The schedule included panel discussions on women in academia, sports and the business world. The speakers brought a multitude of perspectives to the discussion, and each gave different advice to the undergraduates in the audience.

Bonnie Reitz, the senior vice president for marketing, sales and distribution for Continental Airlines, told the audience to be aggressive in their careers.

Though women are gaining ground in the workplace, they still face prejudice, said Reitz, who is the first woman to hold her position at any major U.S. airline. She added that women do not need to conform in the workplace.

"It really is okay to acknowledge that you're different," she said.

The second speaker was Geraldine Laybourne, CEO and founder of Oxygen Media, which runs a website and cable television channel geared toward women.

"The media is no friend of women," Laybourne said, explaining that it is important that unlike Lifetime, an older network for women, Oxygen is owned by women.

Though she discussed recent studies that showed that women scored higher on many leadership skills, women still lag behind in one area, she said.

"Men have an easier time stepping up to risk," she said. "For me, a lot of the progress we need to make is . . . how do we get more comfortable with intuition."

Laybourne's speech was followed by a panel discussion on women in academia with professors Deborah Nord and Joyce Carol Oates and Vice President for Campus Life Janet Dickerson.

Nord discussed a study showing that the majority of women who achieve tenure do not have children after receiving their Ph.D. and suggested this reflected difficulties faced by women who want both families and careers.

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"We want a kind of restructuring of the workplace in order for women to work these two shifts," she said. "It's important to do what you want to do in spite of the obstacles."

Oates discussed her experiences, saying she was not aware of gender discrimination against her until she attended college. As an undergraduate, one professor advised her not to major in philosophy because no professorial positions were available for women.

Oates said she is now involved in hiring professors and that she is mystified by the scarcity of female applicants for many positions.

The final speaker of the afternoon was Valerie Ackerman, president of the Women's National Basketball Association.

Ackerman began optimistically, discussing the increasing leadership roles for women.

"The glass ceiling in college basketball has come down," Ackerman said, noting the popularity of the recent Women's Final Four.

Nevertheless, she said women's professional sports have a long way to go.

"The challenge now for women's sports is to establish ourselves, sustain our businesses and then grow," she said.

Ackerman added that the success of women's sports will have "a real impact in the workplace," in part because many boys have a different image of women as a result of their successes on the playing fields.

Several attendees said the speeches were very inspiring.

"[The conference] made me think about a lot of issues I had never really thought about before," Stephanie Amann '05 said in an e-mail. "It addressed a lot of very real issues that real women face."