Inforum launches series featuring game changers, rule breakers

Inforum, Michigan’s leading business forum for women, announced today it will launch a new speaker’s series highlighting women with lessons for anyone who feels stuck in a rut or stifled by conventional thinking.


The series, called IN4M: After Hours, Ahead of the Curve, will kick off Wednesday, Oct. 20, from 5:30 to 7 p.m. at the Birmingham-Bloomfield Art Center. The featured speaker will be Susan J. Douglas, a University of Michigan communications professor and author of Enlightened Sexism: The Seductive Message That Feminism’s Work is Done (Times Books).
The IN4M (pronounced "inform") series will highlight women who test the limits in work, recreation, and lifestyle. Speakers will be women who question authority, break rules, and strive to make a difference.


"The purpose of this series is to shake people up a little bit – in a good way," said Terry Barclay, CEO of Inforum and Inforum Center for Leadership. "We’ll be presenting speakers who can share groundbreaking ideas and perspectives and inspire audience members to ‘take a leap’ they otherwise might not risk. These events are designed to create thought-provoking dialogue between the speaker and the audience and speakers will provide attendees with actionable items to take home with them. We’re delighted to be starting this series with Susan J. Douglas, a prize-winning author, columnist, and cultural critic with a lot of intellectual firepower and leading-edge ideas."


At the Oct. 20 event, Douglas will discuss why she thinks feminism -– a movement that has been maligned and accused of being out of step with the times –- is as necessary as ever. She will discuss how the media, by exaggerating women’s achievements and suggesting that full equality has been achieved, repeatedly imply that feminism is no longer needed.


"Enlightened sexism is a new, subtle, sneaky form of sexism that seems to accept – even celebrate -– female achievements on the surface, but is really about repudiating feminism and keeping women, especially young women, in their place," Douglas said. "It is a response, deliberate or not, to the perceived threat of a new gender regime. Enlightened sexism insists that because women have allegedly achieved full equality with men, and the battle is over and won, it’s now OK, even funny, to resurrect retrograde, sexist images of women, especially young women. I want to talk back to these images, and expose why they’re false, and dangerous."


Cost is $29 for Inforum members, $39 for non-members. For information or to register, visit inforummichigan.org