Jennifer Newell

Before I begin my blog, let me say that I've been involved in poker for a number of years, and I fully realize that it's a male-dominated game. Between the media, the players, and the casino management, I am severely outnumbered as one of the few women in the business. Along with those facts, I understand that there are some outdated stereotypes about women that still float around, and I can sometimes laugh off some of the chauvinism that I witness.

But when the chauvinistic attitudes are perpetrated by none other than Harrah's itself, it's a more than a little unsettling.

First, there were the Milwaukee's Best Light ladies (girls might be a more appropriate term, but I refuse to stoop to the level of Harrah's with that reference) walked around the Amazon Room and its adjacent hallways for seven and a half weeks in teeny tiny shorts and shirts wrapped up around their boobs. I witnessed the fact that it actually worked on many of the men to whom they talked and promoted the beer. Marketing to men is a funny thing, and while they seemed to be successful, the women doing the promoting were touched, spanked, squeezed, and ogled more times than not. The women rarely looked happy, had to have been freezing in their little outfits, and constantly retreated to the ladies bathroom to bitch about their jobs.

Second, the Ladies Championship tournament was a fiasco. I wrote about why I now think it should be abolished from the WSOP lineup in an article at PokerPages, but besides having complaints about how the women themselves handled the event, Harrah's treatment of the women was over the top. Not only did they talk down to the women in the tournament - tournament staff told them they were all "winners" when they reached the money, then one of the floor staff proceeded to offer himself up as part of the prize by saying that he cooked and did laundry - but the official prizes were insulting. While the bracelet and money should have been enough, as it is for every other event, Harrah's threw in a WNBA ticket package and a complete makeover by the creator of "The Swan" television show. How utterly insulting and demeaning.

Third, Harrah's promoted the Lifestyle Gaming Expo with the theme of "Girls, Games and Gear." Does it not sound like you can get girls at the expo? And to use the outdated word "girls" in promotional literature and e-mails is downright offensive. Sure, anyone can buy a booth at the expo and promote whatever they'd like, but there were several strip clubs with outrageous booths that included strippers on poles and strippers in a dunking booth. And the kicker to it all was that anyone going to or from the Amazon Room from the parking lot or the casino was forced to walk through the expo room, so it couldn't be avoided no matter how offended someone might be by it.

I had been under the impression that the poker industry had been trying harder to include women in the game and make them feel more welcome than in past decades. In this day and age, I could only hope that is the case. But Harrah's took poker back more than twenty years and helped to create an atmosphere of separation and even exclusion when it came to women. Sadly, one of the greatest impressions that I took away from this year's WSOP is that women are not viewed as equals by many in the poker world, and there need to be some major changes to turn that around.

We've got a long way to go, baby.