The document discusses the historical and ongoing gender gap in public speaking. It provides evidence that women have faced social pressures to remain silent, from laws thousands of years ago to modern interruptions and lack of opportunity. While women now make up over half of social media and conference attendees, men still dominate speaking roles and receive more attention and retweets. The gap persists due to socialization of women to be less assertive and talkative, as well as face backlash if they do speak up. Efforts are underway to increase gender balance in public forums and reduce unconscious biases among conference organizers.

1. Gender gap in public
speaking
@asalvaire

4. Historically, women have been
silenced

5. Even if we are socialized to think
women talk more

6. Good girls are taught to be quiet
and well behaved

7. The silent sex: a 4,000-year
campaign
• Homer labeled speech as “the business of
men” and Sophocles wrote that “silence is
a woman’s garment”
• The first laws to have come down to us
included a speech code for women. The
people responsible for these laws were the
Sumerians of Mesopotamia, in now modern
Iraq.
• It says that a woman who speaks out of turn
to a man will have her teeth smashed by a
burnt brick.

8. Suppressing of women’s voices
is still part of everyday life
• Male doctors invariably interrupt patients when they
speak, especially female patients, but patients rarely
interrupt doctors in return.
Unless the doctor is a woman.
• Parents interrupt girls twice as often and hold them to
stricter politeness norms.
• Teachers engage boys, who correctly see disruptive
speech as a marker of dominant masculinity, more often
and more dynamically than girls.

11. On Twitter, people retweet men
two times as often as women.
• Social media is dominated by women,
and Twitter is no exception, but it appears
that when it comes to sharing information
on our favourite micro-blogging network,
men are far more likely to be retweeted
than women.

12. A new tool called Twee-Q (“Twitter Equality Quotient”)
lets you scan the Twitter profile of any user to
determine the frequency that they retweet men and
women on the network.
• Throughout Twitter, the results are both
conclusive and pretty shocking – over
more than 11,000 tests, and almost half a
million retweets, men have been
retweeted almost twice as often as
women, with close to 63 percent of all
retweets those of male users.

15. The larger the group, the
more likely men are to speak
• Scholars at Brigham Young University and
Princeton examined whether women speak
less than men when a group collaborates to
solve a problem.
• In most groups that they studied, the time
that women spoke was significantly less than
their proportional representation – amounting
to less than 75 percent of the time that
men spoke.

16. Having a seat at the table is not
the same as having a voice
http://arementalkingtoomuch.com/

17. Authority and power are linked
to male voices
• A study by a Yale psychologist, Victoria L.
Brescoll, found that male senators with more
power (as measured by tenure, leadership
positions and track record of legislation passed)
spoke more on the Senate floor than their junior
colleagues.
• It is also clear that the more powerful men
become, the more they speak. This would seem a
natural correlation, but the same is not true for
women.
• But for female senators, power was not linked
to significantly more speaking time.

18. Male students tend towards greater
talkativeness than female students
• The male tendency to dominate in some classes did
not surprise us, since talkativeness studies in general
have concluded that men dominate mixed discussion
groups everywhere -- both within the classroom and
beyond.
• What did surprise us was the degree to which male
domination appeared to depend on gender
demographics: when the teacher was male and the
students in a particular class were predominantly
male, then male students dominated the discussions.
• In none of the demographic circumstances
studied did women students talk as much as men.

19. Women don’t dare to speak

21. Why don't women talk as much
as men?
• Women's lower self-esteem translates in
language patterns.
• Women are verbally less assertive than
men, in the sense that they are more likely to
use hedges, qualifiers and questioning
intonations.
• Women use more phrases like “kind of,”
“probably” or “maybe,” as well as more fillers
like “um,” “ah” and “I mean.”
• They also turn sentences into questions,
seeking affirmation: “Isn’t it?”

23. Women worry about “negative consequences”
and backlash if they are more voluble
• Powerful women are in fact correct in
assuming that they will incur backlash as a
result of talking more than others
• Troublingly, the study found that their fears
were well founded, as both male and female
listeners were quick to think these women
were talking too much, too aggressively.
• In other words, men are rewarded for
speaking, while women are punished.

24. Another explanation is that women prove to be
extremely vulnerable to interruption.
• Numerous studies have demonstrated that in
mixed-sex conversations, women are
interrupted far more frequently than men
are. By men AND by women.
• Women’s "bursts" last only a few seconds,
while male students typically kept on talking
until they had finished.
• Moreover, once interrupted, women
sometimes stayed out of the discussion for
the remainder of the conversation.

25. “Interruptions can be used to
display or gain dominance”
• A man may be more likely to see
conversation as “a competitive game
while “the woman see discussions as
being collaborative, hence expects and
gives space for interruption.”
• “Men are used to talking more in other
contexts and women being in lower status
positions and this bleeds into the meeting
context.”

26. And it even has a name…

30. https://www.facebook.com/attn/videos/1051065834928875/

33. How To Mansplain In 6 Easy
Steps – Kristy Sammis
• First: Call her by her first name.
• Next: State your opinion as fact.
• Third: Respond as though her facts are opinions.
• Fourth: Be sure to let her know what you think of her.
• Fifth: Make assumptions about her with impunity.
Especially about her age and experience.
– Use innuendo and flirtatious language to make sure she
knows you’d never let a thing like her being wrong get in the
way of your wanting to get in her pants.
• Lastly: If a woman calls you out for any of the above
behaviors, call her out for being overly sensitive.

34. How to bro-propriate

35. Far too many conferences feature
talks exclusively hosted by men.
• Just this past winter at the World Economic
Forum in Davos — the business world’s
super-fancy schmooze-fest in Switzerland —
a stunning 20 percent of the panels
were all-male.
• Women were almost entirely absent from the
panels this year at congressional hearings
discussing the U.S.-Iran deal, even though
women were key players in structuring the
deal, The Brookings Institution recently
noted.

36. And we end up with all-male
panels…

40. You too may have noted that too many pushing for an improvement. As business
(In)visibility of women at forums matters
Conferences and panels provide a platform to share
experiences and perspectives. When you limit the range
of perspectives, you limit the quality of the conversation.
- Simon Rothery, CEO, Goldman Sachs Australia
Where are the women?
Many high-profile conferences, events and taskforces lack
gender balance, despite there often being no shortage of
qualified women. It is estimated less than 15% of panellists in
Australia are women. Less than 12% of experts cited in business
newspapers are women. Such optics have consequences.
15%
of panellists in Australia are women
Consequences of
(in)visibility
The absence of women at public
professional forums is a problem.
Because speakers are usually
male, audiences are given a narrow
perspective. The lack of diversity limits
the quality of the conversation and
potential outcomes.
Moreover, when visible role models
are male, the absence of women
perpetuates absence of women. Fewer
women choose to speak, and fewer are
chosen.
Without the opportunity for women to
serve on panels as thought leaders,
women lack profile-building speaking
opportunities, an important contributor
to experience and recognition.
In the rare instances women do
present at events, entrenched gender
biases often surface, leading to
negative experiences for the presenter.
Women who speak up may encounter
derogatory comments or be perceived
as arrogant.

41. Apple’s Worldwide Developers
Conference

44. Source: www.feministe.us
What conference organizers answer
when asked for female speakers

45. Yet, The Odds That a Panel Would
'Randomly' Be All Men Are Astronomical
• One mathematician’s formula suggests that all-male lineups don’t “just
happen,” despite what conferenceorganizers might claim.

46. The gender gap in public
speaking is not random
• It is the consequence of internalized
cultural norms:
– Women’s lower encline to speak in public
and/or self promote.
– Men’s greater visibility towards public eye
– Conference organizers’ unconscious bias

47. Taking a stand on
visibility of women
at forums
You too may have noted that too many
panel appearances and speaking
engagements are offered to men.
Too few are offered to women. The
imbalance continues.
The Male Champions of Change,
Chief Executive Women and Women’s
Leadership Institute Australia are
committed to calling out imbalances and
pushing for an improvement. As business
leaders, we pledge that whenever we
are invited to be involved in or sponsor a
panel or conference, we will inquire about
organiser efforts to ensure women leaders
are represented. This “Panel Pledge”
is effective and simple to implement.
It serves as a reminder at an opportune
moment of influence.
Where are the women?
Many high-profile conferences, events and taskforces lack
gender balance, despite there often being no shortage of
qualified women. It is estimated less than 15% of panellists in
Australia are women. Less than 12% of experts cited in business
newspapers are women. Such optics have consequences.
15%
of panellists in Australia are women
Consequences of
(in)visibility
The absence of women at public
professional forums is a problem.
Because speakers are usually
male, audiences are given a narrow
perspective. The lack of diversity limits
the quality of the conversation and
potential outcomes.
Moreover, when visible role models
are male, the absence of women
perpetuates absence of women. Fewer
women choose to speak, and fewer are
chosen.
Without the opportunity for women to
serve on panels as thought leaders,
women lack profile-building speaking
opportunities, an important contributor
to experience and recognition.
In the rare instances women do
present at events, entrenched gender
biases often surface, leading to
negative experiences for the presenter.
Women who speak up may encounter
derogatory comments or be perceived
as arrogant.

48. Conferences are a business and the
social media backlash can be drastic
• Example of a tech conference in the US:
– It was pointed out on Twitter that the lineup so far
is white males.
– This became frenzied and shared with allegations
of racism/sexism.
– This put the sponsors in an awkward position
regarding commitment to the conference.
– This meant the venue contract couldn't be signed
because of a potential lack of financial security.
– Since the team can't be personally liable for the
costs, there was a hard decision to be made.
– That decision was: cancel.

49. And some websites start to
“make fun” of this situation

55. So what can you do?

56. The Women’s Leadership Institute in Australia put
together a handy toolkit for those who want to say no

57. The #Panel Pledge movement
started in Australia
• It’s easy! When you’re invited to participate on a
panel, ask the organizers who else is speaking.
• Tell them you’ve made a pledge to avoid all-male
panels and can’t speak if there are no women
going.
• Then suggest some women that might be great
for the event.
• Reserve the right to bail out at the last minute if
your requirements aren’t met.
• And speak up about the need for a diversity of
voices!

60. In Sweden and Norway, male speakers are now
refusing to participate in conferences and panel
discussions without female representation.
• 70- 80 percent of all the experts in media today
are men, and if we continue to organize all- male
panels and jurys we keep reproducing the image
of an expert as a man.
• Saying no to all-male panels is an easy way to let
more people contribute to a concrete change.
• The Norwegian initiator Benja Stig Fagerland,
Founder and CEO of Women Sp3akers, sees the
Say No campaign as part of a new, international
wave of feminism that is driven by social media.

62. If you attend a conference
• Leverage social
media!
• Point out gender
imbalances when you
see them
• #allmalepanels

63. If you are a conference organizer
• The ingredients are simple :
– Open an inviting call for presentations (CFP).
– Select talks anonymously, and state in the CFP
that you do so.
– Encourage people from under-represented
groups to submit to the CFP.

65. When President Obama held his last
news conference of 2014, he called on
eight reporters — all women.
• It made headlines worldwide. Had a
politician given only men a chance to ask
questions, it would not have been news; it
would have been a regular day.

66. Actively look for women
speakers

69. For women speakers: dare!

70. Join our speakers bureau!