Monday, March 28, 2011

Gender Talk And Pragmatism

Manhattan Bridge (Lower Level)Image via WikipediaSo I showed up for this event called The Future Of Women. It was in Tribeca, which is right there by Chinatown. That helps. After the event was over, I walked over to Chinatown, and had some dumplings. But before that I took some cash out from the bank right by my favorite Buddhist temple in the city, the one by Manhattan Bridge.

I am glad I showed up.

Bumped into Scott Heiferman in the lobby. I had not seen him in a long time. I had seen he had RSVPd. But then I have seen him RSVP for an event and not show up several times before, so I was not counting on him showing up. But he showed up.

A lot of people do that. They see an event. They like it. They want to go. And when it is show up time, something else shows up, or they think of something else to do, or they just get plain lazy. It is not like they penalize you for not showing up.

It was a good event. There was some fun, lively talk. There were very few men in the room.

Gender is a heavy topic. Most people prefer to avoid it entirely. It feels like Calculus 301 to them. Da what?

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I was being pragmatic in showing up. Gender is very relevant to my industry: microfinance. You want to enlighten yourself, but then you also want to not get paralyzed by the topic. Getting things done is important. Sometimes that requires avoiding bringing up gender as a topic.

You focus primarily on serving the people their loans.

I asked for a show of hands. How many here are directly involved with microfinance? Two hands went up. I got to collect two business cards before I left. That alone was worth the $10 ticket for the event. The enlightenment part was pure bonus.
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