My first large scale failure in empowerment

Last week I decided to be super cool and organize a large scale event to empower women in my company. I was so proud of myself; I mapped out all the smart ladies, across different departments , I identified a popular location close to work, I sent a funny invite to 50 of them, calling them to join me for a Powerful Happy Hour.

I then immediately got a bunch of existed e-mails, the meeting got forwarded, more than 20+ confirmed. I was feeling popular and powerful.

But then today, as the happy hour time was approaching, I started receiving apologetic e-mails, in the typical Brazilian fashion. “Wow, really loved your initiative. Congrats! I unfortunately can’t come because of my mom/husband/pet birthday” or whatever other excuse they could come up with.

I felt so shattered mostly not because they didn’t show up for me, but because they saw it as something they were doing for me (or not), rather a cool way for them to network, make new friends or just try something different.

At the end , only 4 girls showed up. We still had a great time and a good chat but I was left very disillusioned.

Lesson re-affirmed: fail quick, fail cheap

Oh well, tomorrow is a new day.

Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus

In a chic rooftop bar downtown Austin, myself and some B-school girlfriends, ran into some interesting types from the male gender. One guy was insisting on asking me when I am from, and so I decided to annoy him and just not give him the answer (“I am from planet earth,” I said), hoping he would come up with something original. His original comeback was  “You are from Mars”. “Women are from Venus”, I told him. He didn’t get it.

From my guy friends I know that it’s also hard for them to pick up women, but last night made me think that either the guys became dumber or  I became dumber. There was the “where are you from?” guy. There was “My friend has a bottle of whiskey, do you want to join our table?” guy. There was the really drunk guy trying to impress us with his falling about on the dance floor, who also tried to buy us a drink by saying “I would really like to buy a cute girl a drink”. There was a “stare-at-you-creepily-hoping-for-attention” guy. There were the “We have a British accent and therefore you should be impressed and join our table”, middle-aged guys. And the list goes on and on…

At least the bartenders were very attractive, didn’t talk and gave my friend free drinks.

This also reminds me of  an interesting dating solution my California friend told me about. Being skeptical about online dating, she is considering a less “awkward” option (according to her), a site called DuoDater. This site asserts that “friends don’t let friends date solo” and allows pairs of friends to create profiles and go on double dates with other pairs. I guess this is a good idea for all of us that like to have a wing-man/woman in a normal life dating situations. Way to go DuoDater! I have no idea if this service actually works, but I will report if I hear anything. Maybe I will start the Brazilian version and test it out there.

Creative Statistics Applied to Men-Women Relationships

On my way to explore yet another eating place in my area (this time 5 Guys Burgers -it was OK), I was listening to some talk show that came on the radio. A girl who was doing her PhD, I assume in Psychology, came on the show to talk about her research. It was about the predictors for susceptibility/motivation to cheat and how they differ between men and woman. The only thing that was consistent between men and women was that if they have anxiety about their performance at home, they will be more likely to cheat. In layman’s terms, the conclusion of her study was that the only thing that can be used to predict men’s behavior was their level of sexual libido and not the state of their relationships, level of satisfaction with current relationship, appreciation from the partner, etc., etc. The host of the show seemed very disappointed that she cannot control her man in this case, regardless of how hard she tries to invest in the relationship. For women, the results were obviously different and since I don’t really remember what the PhD person said about them, aside from the words “regression”, “independent variable”, “blah”, blah”, I assume they were not so important. In any case, I thought her study was some kind of exercise in Stats 101.

Not sure how any of this is useful but I guess listening to this show was better than listening to Katy Perry’s Last Friday Night for the 1000 time.