{"id":258,"date":"2009-10-30T10:18:05","date_gmt":"2009-10-30T17:18:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/barbaraguggenheim.com\/bg\/?p=258"},"modified":"2025-11-01T13:16:19","modified_gmt":"2025-11-01T20:16:19","slug":"estrogen-in-the-air-a-firsthand-account-of-the-womens-conference-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/barbaraguggenheim.com\/bg\/estrogen-in-the-air-a-firsthand-account-of-the-womens-conference-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Estrogen In The Air: A firsthand account of the Women’s Conference"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Editor’s Note: Barbara Guggenheim is the founder of Barbara Guggenheim, Associates, Inc., one of America’s best known art consultant firms. She’s built collections for Coca-Cola and Sony, Tom Cruise and Steven Spielberg, among many others. She holds a doctorate in Art History, has taught on the college level, lectured at the Whitney Museum and worked at Sotheby’s and Christie’s. Barbara has been profiled for Vanity Fair and interviewed on “Larry King Live.” Her recent book is The Ultimate Organizer: Be Your Own Personal Assistant<\/a>,\u00a0written with\u00a0Nadine Schiff.<\/em><\/p>\n

I went to the California Women’s Conference for one reason – to test the waters\u00a0by selling advance copies of a book I have coming out in January. My co-author\u00a0and I thought it was a great venue for soliciting responses. We sold all the copies\u00a0we brought, which was thrilling. Yet, I came away with a lot more.<\/p>\n

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The California Women’s Conference, held in Long Beach every fall, is the largest of\u00a0its kind. Being in the company of 15,000 women, all trying to learn more, climb\u00a0the corporate ladder or give back, is awesome. As women, we’ve come a long way,\u00a0and the issues that we face today have changed since the days of Gloria Steinem\u00a0and Bette Friedan. The conference takes that into account and addresses issues\u00a0that women face today – how to de-stress, deal with grief and make tough\u00a0decisions, to name a few of the topics discussed.<\/p>\n

For a day and a half everyone is running from one panel or speech to another,\u00a0with breaks for mingling and shopping in a giant exhibition hall filled with booth\u00a0after booth selling a variety of wares from makeup to secondhand furs. A star-studded\u00a0cast of celebrities, including Schwarzenegger, Katie Couric (who\u00a0welcomed the smell of estrogen in the air), Richard Branson, Geena Davis and Eve\u00a0Ensler gave us tips and tools for negotiating the world today. All were interesting,\u00a0but Madeleine Albright went balls out (can you say that in a room of 15,000\u00a0women?) and got a roaring ovation for insisting, “There should be a special place\u00a0in hell for women who don’t help other women.” Amen.<\/p>\n

As much as I enjoyed seeing the celebs I look up to, I was more deeply affected by\u00a0Victoria Jackson, a successful makeup entrepreneur, who broke my heart\u00a0describing her sleepless nights in her race to find a cure for her teenage daughter’s\u00a0disease.\u00a0Somaly Mam<\/a>, a runaway sex slave who runs\u00a0shelters for other girls like her in Cambodia, was unforgettable in providing a\u00a0lesson in fearlessness. And then there was a woman selling Nepalese weavings\u00a0made by the kids in an orphanage she singlehandedly supports. That was\u00a0impressive.<\/p>\n

Since Arnold Schwarzenegger became governor, the conference has been Maria\u00a0Shriver’s baby. This year, she herself provided all 15,000 attendees with one of the\u00a0most affecting moments of the conference. As the moderator on a panel on grief,\u00a0healing and resilience, with Elizabeth Edwards, Lisa Niemi (Patrick Swayze’s wife)\u00a0and Susan Saint James, Maria began the session by pouring her heart out to all\u00a0assembled about the loss of her mother and uncle. By the end, there wasn’t a dry\u00a0eye in the house. I wish I could have wrapped my arms around Maria and\u00a0everyone else in the hall who has suffered loss, to assure them that they’re not\u00a0alone in their grief.<\/p>\n

Would I suggest that you go next year? Absolutely, but please remember to wear\u00a0sneakers and carry a box of Kleenex.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Editor’s Note: Barbara Guggenheim is the founder of Barbara Guggenheim, Associates, Inc., one of America’s best known art consultant firms. She’s built collections for Coca-Cola and Sony, Tom Cruise and Steven Spielberg, among many others. She holds a doctorate in … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":259,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-258","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-magazine-articles-by-barbara"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/barbaraguggenheim.com\/bg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/258","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/barbaraguggenheim.com\/bg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/barbaraguggenheim.com\/bg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/barbaraguggenheim.com\/bg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/barbaraguggenheim.com\/bg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=258"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/barbaraguggenheim.com\/bg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/258\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":492,"href":"https:\/\/barbaraguggenheim.com\/bg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/258\/revisions\/492"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/barbaraguggenheim.com\/bg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/259"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/barbaraguggenheim.com\/bg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=258"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/barbaraguggenheim.com\/bg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=258"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/barbaraguggenheim.com\/bg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=258"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}