Why do women ask fewer questions in public? – 10/13/2023 – Science

Throughout my years in the profession, I have presented dozens of radio programs and mediated hundreds of live public events.

The Q&A session is an important part of these events. Therefore, I always try to make everyone feel comfortable asking any questions they want.

But no matter how much I try to relax people, when hands go up, there are always more men than women coming forward to ask questions. And, often, the first hands to go up are all male.

Of course, women may have fewer questions to ask, which is legitimate. But countless times, in line for the women’s bathroom after the event, women from the audience came up to ask me the question they wanted to ask, but not in public. And they are invariably excellent questions.

These are isolated episodes and not a set of scientifically obtained data. But after years of having the same experiences over and over again, I decided to look at the statistics.

Most research on this topic is the result of audience observations at academic conferences, not at events open to the general public. Still, they provide clarification. And the evidence indicates that my experience is not isolated – it is the general rule.

One example is the study by Shoshana Jarvis, from the University of California at Berkeley, in the United States. The researcher observed people asking questions at a conference. The study was published in 2022 and the event included everyone from biologists to astrophysicists and economists.

At that conference, to ask a question, you had to get up from your chair and stand in line in front of a microphone, with everyone looking around you. Among the participants, 63% were men, so it would be expected that 63% of the questions would come from them.

But the result was that men asked 78% of the questions.

Researcher Alecia Carter, now at University College London, reached the same result in a study that observed 250 seminars from academic departments in 10 different countries. She concluded that women were 2.5 times less likely to ask questions than men, even though men and women attended seminars, on average, at the same rate.

It’s true that in these studies, observers looked only at the actual questions asked, not who raised their hand to try to make a point. Therefore, there is a possibility that the moderators decided to accept mostly men’s questions.

But the continued experience of men asking more questions caught the attention of academics.

When a man asks the first question at a public event, fewer women tend to ask questions next.

What is keeping women away from Q&A sessions at conferences and talks? Apparently, it’s not for lack of questions.

Alecia Carter analyzed surveys with 600 academics from 20 countries and noticed that both men and women responded that, sometimes, they did not come forward to ask questions, even when they had something to question.

But women more often said they didn’t ask questions because they couldn’t overcome their nervousness, because they wondered if they had misunderstood the context, because the speaker was eminent or too intimidating, or because they didn’t feel intelligent enough to come up with a good question.

No one wants to ask a question and hear, in front of 300 people, that they didn’t understand what was being said. But the study indicates that this possibility mainly discourages women.

In the United States, Jarvis found that women often said they felt too anxious to ask questions. The men responded that they held back to give space to others – which indicates that some men are taking active measures to not dominate the question and answer sessions at the events.

Twice as many men as women said they are motivated to ask questions when they think they have found an error. It may seem mean, but it is part of the process for speakers to respond to criticism from the audience during academic events.

The surveys also examined the nature of the questions posed by men and women. It is sometimes claimed that men are more likely to ask longer questions or try to present more than one question at a time. I myself can’t believe how many times I announce that we have time for one last quick question and the person chosen starts by saying they have three questions to ask.

But it’s not just men who break these rules. Gillian Sandstrom, from the University of Sussex, in the United Kingdom, analyzed more than 900 questions from 160 conferences or public events, in an unpublished document.

She found no gender-based differences. In fact, when women asked questions, their questions were as likely to be long or have multiple parts as men.

And, comparing the other characteristics of the questions (such as starting by introducing yourself, greeting the speaker or saying “good morning”), the only variation found between genders was that women tended to greet the speaker more frequently.

In other words, the only real difference is who volunteers more to ask questions: men or women.

Research indicates that mediators have the power to encourage women to ask questions at public events.

It’s possible to argue that because there isn’t time for everyone to ask questions, it doesn’t matter if some people don’t introduce themselves. But the point is, if half the audience is reluctant to participate, you may not have enough questions of the desired diversity and quality.

Research so far has tended to focus on men and women, but it would also be interesting to see whether other marginalized or underrepresented groups also refrain from asking the questions they would like answered.

In the workplace, asking questions can put you in the spotlight – and, if you want better positions, visibility is important.

In a study carried out at a conference in France, researcher Junhanlu Zhang from the Pasteur Institute found that people are more likely to remember the names of serial questioners.

Of course, this does not necessarily mean that they will be remembered in a positive way. Maybe they will be remembered for being the annoying ones who ask questions all the time!

And there is one more possible reason why fewer women ask questions: the fact that, at the beginning of their academic career, they have fewer role models from other women who show that they do not need to be afraid to ask questions.

How to solve?

What can be done to allow more women to ask questions whenever they want?

Apparently, the Covid-19 pandemic may have shown a way.

When events began to be held online, a new opportunity arose to ask questions without having to say a word out loud — just typing the questions in a window on the screen, sometimes anonymously.

With this, it was no longer necessary to face the discomfort of waiting with your hand raised, feeling the hope and fear of being chosen, nor worrying about whether the microphone is working or whether you will stutter during the question when everyone is watching.

Currently, more and more in-person events are using applications for participants to send their questions via cell phone. The mediator then receives a list of questions on a tablet.

Let’s assume that your question has already been commented on by the speaker when you weren’t paying attention (something that always worries me when I attend a conference). Well, here comes the best part: as the mediator is paid to pay attention, he does not present the redundant question to the participants at the table. It simply ignores issues that have already been discussed before.

Naturally, all of this would eliminate some of the anxiety and lead to women coming up with as many questions as men at online events, right?

Well, according to Zhang’s study, the answer is no.

She recorded the number of questions asked by women and men at a French bioinformatics conference held online in June 2021. In this field, until recently, participants were mostly men. But when the conference was held online, the number of men and women participating was almost identical.

Even so, men asked 115 questions and women asked 57.

Age also made a difference. Men over 35 asked nine times as many questions as younger women and gender minorities.

In Zhang’s study, the moderator’s gender did not change the audience’s mood. But perhaps there are strategies that mediators can adopt to make a difference. And Sandstrom believes moderators need to find ways to make everyone feel comfortable asking questions.

It has been observed that when a man asks the first question, fewer women come forward with questions afterwards. It’s almost as if the first question sets the tone for the rest of the session.

Perhaps the solution for the moderator is to choose a woman to ask the first question – ideally, someone younger. Of course, this only works if there are some younger women with their hands raised in the audience.

When I coordinate a talk and no women come forward to ask, I sometimes tell the audience about the research in this field and ask openly if any women would like to ask the first question.

Zhang’s research reveals another possible solution: taking a short break between the main speaker and the start of the question-and-answer session. This is a smart technique. It allows people to rehearse their questions with their neighbors in the audience.

I tried this alternative and managed to get a lot more questions. People can check whether their questions are good, or whether they were not discussed in the lecture while they were not paying attention.

It has also been found that women ask more questions in longer sessions. I know that not everyone will approve of this idea, but perhaps it is worth setting aside more time for questions at the end of the lectures.

Currently, we depend on research carried out in academic situations. It would be interesting to know if the same also happens at public events.

The advantage of these techniques is that they not only help women, but all people who may feel marginalized and less willing to speak out loud.

This text was originally published here.