When I first noticed the manosphere rising, I thought it was V2 of the Old Boys’ Club. A Club I have known so well in my consulting career. I was wrong. The manosphere is a whole different beast, a beast that wants to lock us out rather than only silencing us.
This week, the manosphere is chest thumping as DEI programs and support disappear from corporate America. AI is moving heavily to take over roles women have historically filled. Thousands of decisions across hundreds of boardrooms are headed in the same direction. Even conferences and events that were packed with women are being reshaped and/or renamed to avoid inviting the death label “For Women.”
The latest heartbreaker for me, and so many of you, happened last week when AnitaB.org canceled the 2026 Grace Hopper Celebration, two weeks before it opened. The legendary career fair, where students have landed first internships and first jobs for three decades, is gone.
The explanation was simple. Corporate: registrations and sponsorship commitments fell below what was needed to cover expenses.
When you review the last 3 years, the numbers tell the story behind it. AnitaB.org’s contributions and grants collapsed from $11.2 million in 2023 to $724,350 in 2024. That’s a 93% drop in one year.
Attendance fell from 29,000 to 17,000. The organization posted a $14.6 million loss. The changes coincide with the dual pronged spear of the Supreme Court’s Fair Admissions decision in 2023 and the Trump administration’s 2025 application of that decision to DEI within the government AND for any and all government contractors. In a nutshell, support for women got swept into the DEI label and treated as discrimination.
The media and social headlines are spinning this as a “nonprofit management problem.” Trying to position it as a one-off. with fingers of misdirected blame all pointing in the wrong direction.
Grace Hopper isn't a one-off. Grace Hopper is the tip of the iceberg, highly visible above the waterline.
What’s below the surface is an active shift in corporate America.
Women Who Code shut down in April 2024 after losing critical funding.
Ada Lovelace Day closed the same year, its founder noting that the largest tech companies on earth, sitting on trillions in cash, had shown no interest in supporting it.
Google quietly offloaded its global Women Techmakers program in 2025.
Tech Girls Movement, 500 Women Scientists, Girls in Tech; all closed or paused inside an eighteen-month window.
NYC Pride lost a quarter of its corporate donors in 2025.
San Francisco Pride lost $300,000.
Juneteenth festivals around the country lost sponsors as municipal DEI offices dissolved.
20% of U.S. companies scrapped DEI programs outright after the 2024 election.
Fortune 500 public DEI disclosures dropped 65%in 2026.
For most of the Celebration's history, employers paid for their teams to attend. Not anymore.
When companies stop paying, registration numbers crater right alongside the sponsorship dollars. The same corporate pullback, showing up in two line items. "Registrations fell short" isn't a story about women opting out.
It's a signal that companies are no longer willing to fund women.
Follow the Money
I have always followed a simple rule when I want to see what's really going on beneath the surface. Follow the money.
In the case of DEI programs and corporate spending, the money hasn't disappeared. It moved in male directions. A few examples?
UFC sponsorship revenue grew nearly $63 million in a single year to $314 million in 2025.
WWE added 35 new title sponsors, a 67% new-entrant rate.
Amazon is spending $3.8 billion on live sports rights in 2026 alone.
Paramount signed a $7.7 billion deal to broadcast UFC.
Nvidia, whose flagship AI superchip is literally named the Grace Hopper Superchip, pulled its sponsorship from the Celebration bearing her name while its market cap sailed past $3 trillion.
Turning Point USA raised $85 million in 2024, launching a Men’s Summit designed, in Charlie Kirk’s own words, to “deprive you of calories, of sleep” until “you learn how to become a man.”
The companies that named their chips, their cables, their supercomputers after Grace Hopper pushed the Celebration bearing her name collapse.. The money didn’t vanish. It walked across the street to the rooms built for men.
What happened with Grace Hopper is only above the waterline for us all to see because the cancellation was impossible to hide.
Which makes me want to applaud AnitaB.org. They may very well have quite strategically and publicly fallen on a huge sword for a very important purpose
The iceberg is no longer hidden.
Now the question becomes, what are we going to do about it?