> I'm not sure I can agree with the idea of dressing more of the booth babes in bikinis
I don't think that was OP's point, per se. It's that the bikini-clad "uniform" tended to provide an automatic distinction between the women hired to staff booths from the women attending the conference. Once that distinction was removed an unfortunate bias and/or numbers game kicked in: attendees started implicitly assuming "woman == hired help."
"Out of the frying pan and into the fire" has never been such a depressing turn of phrase. :-P
I don't think that was OP's point, per se. It's that the bikini-clad "uniform" tended to provide an automatic distinction between the women hired to staff booths from the women attending the conference. Once that distinction was removed an unfortunate bias and/or numbers game kicked in: attendees started implicitly assuming "woman == hired help."
"Out of the frying pan and into the fire" has never been such a depressing turn of phrase. :-P