Webinar Women in Business: Breaking The ‘Confidence Culture’
8 March 2022, 19:00
LSE AAB Webinar Women in Business: Breaking The ‘Confidence Culture’
To coincide with International Women’s Day 2022, the LSE Alumni Association Belgium is happy to invite you to our webinar ‘Women in Business’ with a special focus on the confidence culture, a topic which has made its way into the recent book by Shani Orgad and Rosalind Gill. During the event, we want to unpack this broader cultural issue that has long dominated gender focused reports, articles, talks, blogs or podcasts, often encouraging women to “believe in themselves”, to “lean in” or learn to tweak certain behavioural aspects. The corporate narrative is suggesting that women can apply behavioural ‘DIY type’ changes in how they act in the workplace to overcome inequalities.
But there are some downfalls of this individualistic approach that encourages individual solutions to structural corporate problems.
The LSE AAB invites you for a chat with Shani Orgad, Professor in the Department of Media and Communications at LSE and Karen Massin, Head of Government Affairs and Public Policy at Google, to discuss the topic of confidence in the workplace and the popularity of this concept, and dig into where the emphasis maybe should be placed. With the pandemic throwing additional hurdles at female executives, addressing broader workplace issues is needed more than ever. We will talk about what could actually be at cause of women not getting to the top of the corporate ladder, and how employers can help create more inclusive environments.
The discussion will be moderated by Maria Sotiriou, President of the LSE AAB.
- When: Tuesday 8 March, from 19:00 to 20:00 CET.
- For whom? The event is free to attend and open to all
- Register to receive the connection details
Speakers
Karen Massin, Head of Government Affairs and Public Policy at Google
Karen leads Google’s Government Affairs & Public Policy team in Brussels. In this role, she drives the development and implementation of outreach strategies, and engages in various policy areas affecting the digital industry such as platform policies, privacy, content management, economic recovery and sustainability.
Previously, Karen was the CEO of the public affairs consultancy BCW, becoming one of the most senior female executives under 40 working in EU affairs. She also led BCW’s Public Affairs Practice across Europe and managed pan-European advocacy programmes for a wide range of industries towards regulators, industry, NGOs and media. Karen was a board member of EPACA, where she supported the trade body on setting priorities and strategic direction. Previously Karen worked at the UN, the European Commission and the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
Shani Orgad, Professor in the Department of Media and Communications at LSE
Professor Orgad joined the Department of Media and Communications as a lecturer in September 2003 and since then has won numerous teaching awards, including a 2019 LSE Teaching Excellence Prize, a 2018 LSE Excellence in Education Award, as well as the LSE Innovator Award.
Specialised in media and communications, her research interests include gender, feminism and the media, media representations, inequality and contemporary culture, representations of suffering and migration, new media, narrative and media, media and everyday life, media and globalisation, and ethnographic research methods.
Professor Orgad, along with Rosalind Gill, is the author of the book ‘Confidence Culture’, where they question the prominence of confidence in contemporary discourse about body image, workplace, relationships, motherhood, and international development.
