Are men and women heard differently in the workplace? Have your say

Those who attended the last Workplace Trends conference will recall that regular contributor Paige Hodsman (Saint-Gobain Ecophon) and the organisers are conducting research into why some women or men are not always heard in their workplace. They are now reaching out to more people to complete a 10 to 15 minute survey to inform this pertinent research.  You can take part by complete the survey here before the 24th of^ December. The survey also allows you to receive a copy of the findings or attend a free seminar once the research has been published.

Paige and Nigel Oseland of Workplace Trends published a detailed review of the literature on the subject here. The findings of the review are summarised below.

Summary

Dating back to ancient Greece, there is a long history of public speaking and debate being a
masculine discipline with women being hushed. Consequently, the prejudice towards female
voice and speech is deeply ingrained through language and culture. More recently, countless
published research papers and popular press articles verify that women struggle to be heard in
the workplace, particularly in meetings and in the boardroom.

Our original remit was to understand why women aren’t heard in the workplace which raised
two immediate questions. Firstly, by women we focused on traditional male-female differences
as explored in legacy studies rather than broader gender studies. Secondly, what is meant by
being heard, is it physically being heard or simply not being acknowledged or respected?
Furthermore, there are many other confounding factors, beyond the scope of this literature
review, that effect women being heard in the workplace and need further exploration, including
the impact of gender, race, culture, socioeconomic status, personality and virtual meetings to
name a few.

This literature review highlights the legacy evidence showing that women are often less heard in
the workplace compared to men. It concludes that women are not heard because:
i) women are not physically heard, due to the characteristics of a women’s voice and whether
males can hear it,
ii) women are physically heard but not listened to, relating to women being interrupted or
talked over, and men talking more in poorly managed meetings,
iii) women are physically heard and listened to but then not understood, which concerns
communication styles and differences in use and understanding of language between males
and females, and
iv) women are physically heard, listened to and understood but then not acknowledged or their
views acted upon, which is the broader issue of women being ignored in the workplace.

Work and the workplace had changed significantly since the Covid-19 pandemic, and much of
the reviewed research was carried out before the pandemic. The literature review identified the
need for further research to understand if women are better heard in the workplace and if
attitudes have changed.

Nonetheless, the literature review has also highlighted some basic means of improving
communication between males and female in the workplace. The guidance will be developed
further following further proposed research.