• Skip to content
  • Skip to secondary menu
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer
  • Home
  • Shop ModernMom
  • Become An Insider

ModernMom

The premiere destination for moms

  • Parenting
    • Pregnancy
    • Baby
    • Kids
    • Tweens and Teens
    • ModernMom Monday Videos
  • Cooking
  • Living Healthy
    • Breast Cancer
    • Health & Fitness
    • Body after Baby
    • Beauty
    • Relationships
    • Love
  • Lifestyle
    • Crafts
    • At Home
    • Education
    • Travel
    • Pets
    • Decorate
    • Money
    • Brooke Burke
  • Celebrate
    • Holidays
      • Easter
      • Valentine’s Day
      • New Year’s
      • Christmas
      • Hanukah
      • Halloween
      • Thanksgiving
    • Birthdays
    • Parties
  • Must Have
  • Contests
  • Entertainment

Do Women Need to Learn How to Speak Out in a Crowd?

February 27, 2012 by Leslie Morgan Steiner Leave a Comment

Most of my life has been spent in groups of men and women.  First, my family of six.  Then elementary school classrooms.  Then more school, including business school, where 100% of our work occurred in study groups.  Then actual business, with its endless small meetings and large presentations, as well as a few nonprofit boards, where all work again occurs in groups.

What’s always puzzled me is how reluctant the women in all of these groups have been when it comes to expressing our opinions.  If even one man is present, I find women wait to listen to his views before expressing ours. (I find myself reluctant to speak first, as well.) Many a female colleague will share brilliant ideas one-to-one before and after the group discussions.  But during the meetings, we often sit frozen, as if someone had pushed an invisible mute button on all the female mouths in the room.

Turns out there is scientific evidence behind this weird and frustrating dynamic.  Researchers at the Virginia Tech Carilion Research Institute conducted scientific studies to explore how the brain processes information about social status in small groups, and how perceptions of one’s status can affect IQ.

“We started with individuals who were matched for their IQ,” said Reed Montague, who led the study. “Yet when we placed them in small groups, ranked their performance on cognitive tasks against their peers, and broadcast those rankings to them, we saw dramatic drops in the ability of some study subjects to solve problems. The social feedback had a significant effect.”

Especially on the women.

The men and women involved were very smart, with similar mean intelligence scores of 126, compared to the national average of 100.  But during group discussions, some individuals’ “expressed IQ” decreased in reaction to signals about their status within the group.

Neither age nor ethnicity showed a significant correlation with performance or brain responses. A significant pattern did emerge along gender lines, however. Despite having the same baseline IQ as the men beside them, significantly fewer women (3 of 13) were in the brainiac group. Significantly more women (10 of 13) fell into the dumb-and-dumber cohort.

“Over 80% of the people whose IQ diminished in group settings were women,” explains Montague.

This translates to: women feel intimidated and tongue-tied in groups with men if we perceive them to have higher status, so we come across as less intelligent.  We are women, hear us roar – unless we are in a group that includes men.

I’ve witnessed this myself over the years: even the smartest, best-educated women speak up less frequently in groups that include men.  We worked hard for years to earn a spot in these elite conference rooms.  But once there, many of us speak less confidently, less persuasively.  Those good ideas stay stuck inside our brains, released afterwards one-to-one to someone whose IQ and status we perceive to be equal – our female colleagues.

This findings made The Today Show with businesswoman Ivanka Trump giving her two cents.  Anchorwoman Ann Curry – no dummy herself — puts a positive spin on the research:  women can, and do, use our sensitivity to subtle social cues as a form of emotional intelligence, to read people and situations more quickly and accurately than men.  We just have not yet found a way to translate this sixth sense into widespread power, persuasion and value in the workplace.

Knowing the dynamic is real and that it affects women despite our accomplishments and intelligence – understanding that women aren’t actually less gifted than men, we just are hamstrung in certain social situations – hypothetically might help us overcome our hesitation to speak out and make ourselves heard in group settings.

But The Today Show brings up another smart question: with women holding 48% of all jobs in the U.S. today, do women need to adapt to the male-dominated work world and force ourselves to overcome an inherent, biological reticence — or does the world need to change the way group discussions proceed in order to address, and capitalize on, women’s different approaches to expression?

Perhaps a bit of both.  Compromise, after all, is another traditionally female strength.

Comments

comments

Filed Under: Uncategorized

About Leslie Morgan Steiner

Leslie Morgan Steiner is the editor of the best-selling anthology Mommy Wars: Stay-at-Home and Career Moms Face Off on Their Choices, Their Lives, Their Families. Steiner regularly discusses working motherhood on the Today Show, MSNBC, and in Newsweek,Vanity Fair, Parents, The New York Times and The Los Angeles Times. Leslie lives with her three children a few blocks away from her Wasband in Washington, DC.

Reader Interactions

Primary Sidebar

Search

Tell a friend

  • Facebook
  • Instagram
  • Pinterest
  • Twitter
  • YouTube

ModernMom TV

Featured

Kissing Kids on the Lips: Fine or Not?

I recently read an article that says that parents should not … [Read More...] about Kissing Kids on the Lips: Fine or Not?

Must Have

STEM-related Toys to Include in Your Child’s Easter Basket This Year 

April has arrived which means it’s time to pull out the food … [Read More...] about STEM-related Toys to Include in Your Child’s Easter Basket This Year 

Did you know?

Pregnancy and Sinus Pain

Pregnancy and Sinus Pain

Baby Hair Growth

Baby Hair Growth

cooking with young children

Cooking With Young Children

How to Detect a Miscarriage

Meals That Pair With Corn on the Cob

Meals That Pair With Corn on the Cob

Natural Remedies to Increase Sperm Count

Natural Remedies to Increase Sperm Count

What Happens When You Mix Lemon Juice With Baking Soda?

What Happens When You Mix Lemon Juice With Baking Soda?

What Does It Mean When Your Partner Curses at You?

What Does It Mean When Your Partner Curses at You?

pregnant while not ovulating

Can I Get Pregnant While Not Ovulating?

fade hair color quickly

How to Fade Hair Color Quickly

Footer

  • About Us
  • Contact ModernMom
  • Advertise With Us
  • Press
  • Privacy Policy
  • Terms of Use
  • Contributors

Copyright © 2023 Modern Mom. All Rights Reserved.

Reproduction of any portion of this website only at the express permission of Mom, Inc.

The information provided on ModernMom is for educational use only. It should not be used as a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis or treatment.