I went to a sistas conference once, was expensive, and one speaker was not even female, he was a gay male that got married. I don't know why his wife didn't speak or say anything as she was there too.
It was so expensive that we even had to pay for our cup of tea. In churches, this is usually free and part of the service.
I don't go to conferences anymore, but I suppose they, like church rallies are places for singles to meet people, unless it's like an all-female conference or something, like sistas was.
Sometimes well-off sistas would pay for a less-well off sista to come with, but that rarely happened in my church circles. I live in a working class suburb, we don't have millionaires in our midst. Most can't even afford tithes.