Meanwhile, in California: Tupperware Parties But for Cannabis

Women continue their efforts to break into the burgeoning pot business: This time, it’s a bunch of Bay Area residents gathering for an in-home networking event slash group hang slash chance to show off your weedy wares. The hostess calls it “a Tupperware party for cannabis.”

The San Francisco Chronicle reports from a recent gathering. Attendees included the founder of SweetLeaf, which touts its medicinal edibles as healthier, and the creator of Doc Green’s Healing Collective creams, which promise no-high topical pain relief. But it’s more than casual shopping among gal pals—it’s an attempt (as California comes closer to considering whether to fully legalize) to work around the fact that it’s generally dudes in charge:

Many female weed entrepreneurs are frustrated that their voice is muted in a business that — much like those in the original Tupperware party era — is male-dominated.

Karyn Wagner, whose Humboldt collective created Sexxpot, said dispensary buyers scoffed when she pitched them the strain aimed at the female libido with the marketing tagline, “the flowers she really wants.”

“That’s because all of the buyers at these dispensaries are men,” Wagner said. “How do they know that there’s no market for it? But we hear that all the time.”

It’s also just a place to get some info without involving a translator:

At one of the group’s first meetings, a woman shared how she had recently visited a dispensary and asked a young male budtender if he had any strains to help alleviate her perimenopausal symptoms. The budtender’s jaw dropped — he could barely say the word…. “It can be overwhelming for some women to go into a dispensary and see all of those products,” said Malek, who along with Conley chairs the Bay Area chapter of Women Grow. “This is the environment where it’s OK to ask those kind of questions.”

Personally, I don’t want to attend a Tupperware party for anything—high-pressure sales environments aren’t really my thing—but now I’m a little annoyed that I can’t.