Grooming Ivanka for 2024

Ivanka Trump’s appearance at a major technology conference in Las Vegas has been met with a backlash from industry figures, who denounced her “privilege” and lack of tech qualifications.

Trump spoke in a keynote session on Tuesday afternoon at CES, a consumer electronics trade show, on “the path to the future of work”.

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In recent years the CTA has invited more women to speak and sought to curb some of the show’s more sexist aspects, such as scantily clad “booth babes” hired to draw the attention of the mostly male attendees.

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But for critics and activists who have long pushed for broader recognition of the less-heralded women, the inclusion of Donald Trump’s daughter, who is also a White House adviser, sends exactly the wrong message.

“Ivanka is not a woman in tech,” tweeted Brianna Wu, a video game developer who is running for Congress in Massachusetts. “She’s not a CEO. She has no background. It’s a lazy attempt to emulate diversity but like all emulation it’s not quite the real thing.”

  Guardian

But it's a fine attempt to curry favor with the power in the White House.

Despite the first daughter’s attempts to strike a positive note, the appearance left women in the tech industry dispirited. The tech analyst Carolina Milanesi wrote in an op-ed published in Forbes: “The reason for my upset is rooted in the fact that there are many more women who are in tech and are entrepreneurs who could run circles around Trump on how technology will impact the future of work.”

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During the discussion, Trump said a White House council that she co-leads will launch a nationwide advertising campaign to encourage all pathways to jobs, including apprenticeships, and not just a college degree. “We need to raise awareness about many options that exist,” she told the audience.

Trump also touted her father’s jobs record and claimed that with 7m job vacancies “every American who wants to work can secure employment”. She noted the positive effects of technological innovation on the workforce.

She may not know tech, but she knows campaigning.

The Women Who Tech group on Facebook also expressed displeasure. The investor Elisabeth Fullerton wrote: “This is an insult to women in technology. We did hard times in university, engineering, math, and applied sciences. This is what extreme privilege and entitlement get you. It’s not what you know it’s who you know I guess”.

Always has been, and will ever be thus.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.