Fallout continued last week from a keynote speech at the ICE Totally Gaming trade show in London in which U.K. Gambling Commission Chairwoman Sarah Harrison complained about exhibitors featuring scantily clad women and even pole dancers as part of their stands at the show.
“I felt that I had missed an opportunity at last year’s ICE,” said Harrison in the keynote address, “an opportunity to highlight and challenge what is a significant stain on this industry’s reputation. This is an industry where we have a number of talented, powerful and successful women. Indeed, a woman from the gambling industry is Britain’s highest-paid boss —not highest paid female CEO but highest paid CEO. Yet from walking around the exhibition, you wouldn’t know this.
“Instead, you saw men representing their companies wearing expensive tailored suits while their female colleagues were expected to wear nothing more than swimsuits. I say, bring this to an end now! It is far from reflective of the modern society and economy of which this industry is a part. And to go further, any future participation by the Gambling Commission in events like this will depend on there being change.”
The fallout continued last week after one woman who had been hired as a hostess for one of the exhibitors at a daily rate of £100 told The Guardian that some men assumed she was a working girl. “Somebody asked me yesterday how much I would charge,” she said, indicating that the request referred to sex. She added that ICE was the “closest thing to the Presidents Club dinner” that she had seen, referring to a now-defunct men-only event attended by politicians, businessmen and celebrities, at which hostesses were allegedly groped and propositioned.
Asked by The Guardian what her job was at the gaming conference, she replied: “Just stand there.”
U.K. politicians last week joined in criticizing the show. Tom Watson, deputy leader of the Labour Party, told the newspaper, “The gambling industry claims to be responsible, but this sexist and chauvinistic behavior has the evident approval of the men at the top.
“After the Presidents Club scandal, you’d expect even the most unreconstructed businesses to realize they should stop treating women as objects—but it seems this industry is ignorant enough not to clean up its act. It’s about time gambling industry CEOs started showing some moral leadership and put a stop to this.”
Labour MP Carolyn Harris said she is “very disappointed that we have not learned the lesson of the President Club debacle. It is never acceptable for any woman to be exploited in this way, and I had hoped that we had left all this seedy voyeurism in the dark past where it belongs. We really must move on from this unacceptable behavior and stop treating women as objects”
The European Casino Association and show producer Clarion Gaming responded last week with an open letter to ICE exhibitors urging vigilance to the objectification of woman ““in the spirit of the 21st century.”
“ICE London has been working with the European Casino Association to encourage respectful representation of women on exhibition stands,” said Clarion in a statement. “This program started in 2016 and will continue… ICE London has featured educational initiatives on diversity and inclusion organized in partnership with Global Gaming Women, an organization that delivers programs that support, inspire and influence the development of women in the gaming and lottery industries.”
