Despite Gains,Women Still Face Acceptance Obstacles | By Courtney Holcomb
IT’S BECAUSE YOU ARE A WOMAN CONVENTION CENTERS:
Women in leadership has always been a controversial issue. How-
ever, as a Generation Xer on the verge of being a Millennial, I have - inent as it is now, but women have held leadership positions for as long as I can remember. I have worked in the hospitality/entertainment industry for eight years, with a female director for three of those years. I worked with women leaders for most of my career, it did not occur to me that this has not always been the norm. In 2014, the BancorpSouth Arena & Conference Center was the
venue for a large religious conference that was “run” by men while the women of the group held only support roles. Their belief is that men should run the business of the church and handle said business with other men. Both they and I had to overcome some issues with this particular conference. As event coordinator, I communicate with conference committees and conference chairs for sometimes years before the actual event begins. This international religious conference occurs once every 10 years, and we began pre-conference meetings about two years out. event would have about 10,000 attendees, which for our venue is about as large as it gets. client as I usually do through the planning of the conference. The conference committee met frequently and each time they would ask to
After several meetings, I became frustrated that they would contin-
thought I could not handle this caliber of event. It was at this point that my colleague pointed out, “Courtney, it’s because you are a wom- an. This particular group believes all business should be handled by other men.” It was there and then that I got a real-world taste of what it can be like for women in leadership. and I had never even imagined that those men did not want to talk to realize that I, a young woman, would be the lead for this event. Once they accepted this, they were happy and never mentioned it again, even though it took a little while to overcome that barrier. They even invited to attend one of their meetings to answer questions from the local congregation. In the end, they were very appreciative of my abil- Women in leadership in today’s society has come a long way, but
I will forever be more aware of barriers that women leaders still face. It does not happen every time, nor even very often, that men want to do business with men, but it does happen. I have learned that I competence. FM
Courtney Holcomb is event coordinator at BancorpSouth Arena & Conference Cen- ter in Tupelo, Mississippi.
IAVM 47
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60
