Excuse me, I'm STILL speaking
How to challenge the gender bias when women speak
“Excuse me, I’m speaking”
-Vice President Kamalah Harris at the Vice Presidential Debate, 2021.
What Vice President Kamala Harris said to stop getting interrupted at a debate in 2021 is still necessary today. Women continue to be interrupted more than men.
There is a bias about how much women speak at meetings. A study by Brescoll in 2011 found that women who spoke up more in meetings were rated as less competent, less likable, and less hireable than men who spoke the same amount. Men, on the other hand, received higher evaluations for speaking more frequently.
A study by Northwestern in 2016 revealed female justices of the Supreme Court are three times more likely to be interrupted by men than their male counterparts.
If our high-level Vice President and Supreme Court Justices are often interrupted, what does that mean for the rest of us?
It’s not enough to have a seat at the table, we need to be fully seen and heard at the table as well.
Here are some que…