Las Vegas Sun

March 29, 2024

J. Patrick Coolican:

Las Vegas’ image may discourage professional women from taking up residence

Las Vegas Stiletto Dash

Leila Navidi

Runners participate in the first annual Rock ‘n’ Roll Las Vegas Stiletto Dash at the Palazzo Saturday, December 3, 2011.

Click to enlarge photo

J. Patrick Coolican

Las Vegas’ image may discourage professional women

The Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority, Las Vegas Mayor Oscar Goodman, Holly Madison, and about 300 bikini-clad women declare it the first day of summer with a world record-breaking parade  Thursday. Launch slideshow »

Las Vegas hosted the Lingerie Bowl during Super Bowl weekend, naturally. Following last year’s Rock ’n’ Roll Las Vegas Stiletto Dash, we have cemented our place as the premier city for athletic contests involving women who are scantily clad and/or in heels.

This fits nicely with our adult playground image. But I wonder if these less-than-progressive portrayals of women could prevent us from luring young professional women to move here, in the same way that the “What happens here” ad campaign is perfect for selling the Strip but not for marketing the rest of the city as a place for serious business or education.

This could be a big deal because our ability to recruit educated women is crucial to our ability to diversify our economy. Women now dominate the educational ranks, constituting three out of five college students nationwide and holding a similarly dominant position in graduate programs. The Grateful Dead were right: The women are smarter.

Jokey sporting events that treat women like circus acts aren’t the only issue: There are also the billboards with nearly undressed women advertising nightclubs and strip clubs and the explicit advertising for prostitution.

This is not to condemn what our city does best or the way people decide to make a living. It’s only to question whether we can persuade a young female medical school graduate to move here.

I talked to a number of professional women about whether this is a welcoming place.

“Driving down to the Strip with young relatives and having them see ‘hot babes to your room.’ That’s not an experience I grew up with, and I’m not sure what message it sends,” said a woman with a foot in politics and business. (Several asked not to be named, which, to me, indicated a fear of being labeled “difficult.”)

As you might imagine, Cara Roberts of the Las Vegas Chamber of Commerce wasn’t thrilled with my premise. She said young women professionals are attracted to Las Vegas for the tremendous opportunities, while acknowledging we need to tailor our message so they know they can achieve big things here.

“We need to be reaching out to college campuses, to graduate schools, and then we need to tell a good story that is comprehensive about the opportunities here,” she said.

It’s worth noting that Las Vegas is far from the only place with image issue. Despite big gains by women in most of the thinking professions, American pop culture has been overrun with less than flattering portrayals of female icons of the Hilton and Snooki variety. Like everything else, the phenomenon is just a little more intensely explicit here.

Our image, though, is just one of many issues — and maybe the least significant — when it comes to being a good city for young women, the women I talked to said.

National polls indicate women voters care about issues such as quality education and health care — not our strengths.

A female partner with a major law firm said that especially before the creation of UNLV’s William S. Boyd School of Law, her firm had trouble recruiting young female lawyers, in part because the marriage market here is so poor, especially for women in search of a partner with a college degree. While that employment dynamic has changed during the recession, as job candidates are knocking down the doors, it may revert when the economy picks up. The partner also said she is still occasionally asked which attorney she works for, because the person assumes she’s a legal secretary.

There’s another potential problem, especially in our most important industry: male-dominated executive suites amonggaming companies. Women have made great strides and begun to break into the executive ranks at big casino companies, but there are only five women total on the boards of MGM Resorts, Caesars Entertainment, Las Vegas Sands and Wynn Resorts. (Obviously, this is true across many industries.)

A female executive at a major company told me she believes her talents are valued but added, “It’s still very male-dominated.”

We have a female mayor as well as a female head of the Clark County Commission, but Erin Bilbray-Kohn, a political consultant, still detects an old-boys club here, and I agree — “the fat boys,” as a woman lobbyist once called the coterie of powerful lobbyists who run the Legislature.

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