Speaking While Female
倾听女性的声音
YEARS ago, while producing the hit TV series “The Shield,” Glen Mazzara noticed that two young female writers were quiet during story meetings. He pulled them aside and encouraged them to speak up more.
数年前，在制作热播电视剧《盾牌》(The Shield)的时候，格伦·马扎拉(Glen Mazzara)注意到，在开剧本会的时候，两位年轻的女性编剧不怎么说话。他把她们拉到一边，鼓励她们多多发言。
Watch what happens when we do, they replied.
看看我们发言的时候会怎样吧，她们回答。
Almost every time they started to speak, they were interrupted or shot down before finishing their pitch. When one had a good idea, a male writer would jump in and run with it before she could complete her thought.
几乎每次她们开始发言，话还没有说完，就有人打断或者否定她们的想法。如果她们想出了一个好点子，男编剧也会在中途抢过话头，自己来继续谈这个点子。
Sadly, their experience is not unusual.
可悲的是，她们的这种经历并不少见。
We’ve both seen it happen again and again. When a woman speaks in a professional setting, she walks a tightrope. Either she’s barely heard or she’s judged as too aggressive. When a man says virtually the same thing, heads nod in appreciation for his fine idea. As a result, women often decide that saying less is more.
我们两人都一次又一次地目睹这样的事情发生。当一个女人在专业领域内发言时，她就是在走钢索。人们或者无视她的话，或者说她太咄咄逼人。当基本上同样的话由一个男人说出时，人们就颔首以赞。其结果是，女性往往觉得少说话为妙。
Some new studies support our observations. 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. But for female senators, power was not linked to significantly more speaking time.
一些新的研究为我们的观点提供了证据。耶鲁大学心理学家维多利亚·L·布里斯克(Victoria L. Brescoll)的一项研究发现，拥有更大权力(从任期、领导职位和通过的立法数量来衡量)的男性参议员，在参议院的发言时间多于资历较浅的同事。但对于女参议员而言，权力和更多的发言时间之间关系并不明显。
Suspecting that powerful women stayed quiet because they feared a backlash, Professor Brescoll looked deeper. She asked professional men and women to evaluate the competence of chief executives who voiced their opinions more or less frequently. Male executives who spoke more often than their peers were rewarded with 10 percent higher ratings of competence. When female executives spoke more than their peers, both men and women punished them with 14 percent lower ratings. As this and other research shows, women who worry that talking “too much” will cause them to be disliked are not paranoid; they are often right.
布里斯克教授怀疑，影响力较大的女性依然发言不多，是因为她们担心招人反感，因此进行了更深入的调查。教授让职业男性和女性来评估高管的能力，这些高管中，有些人表达自己观点的时候比较多，有些则比较少。在男性高管中，发言更多的人获得的能力评分要高10%。而在女性高管中，发言更多的人评分会低 14%，无论评分者是男性还是女性。该研究和其他一些研究所示，担心自己发言“太多”会导致别人反感的女性并不是疑心病太重;她们的感觉往往是对的。
One of us, Adam, was dismayed to find similar patterns when studying a health care company and advising an international bank. When male employees contributed ideas that brought in new revenue, they got significantly higher performance evaluations. But female employees who spoke up with equally valuable ideas did not improve their managers’ perception of their performance. Also, the more the men spoke up, the more helpful their managers believed them to be. But when women spoke up more, there was no increase in their perceived helpfulness.
本文作者之一亚当(Adam)在研究一家医疗保健公司以及为一家国际银行提供咨询时，惊讶地发现了类似的规律。当男性员工提出的建议带来了新的收入时，他们获得了明显更高的绩效评价。但是，如果是女员工提供了同样宝贵的意见，那么上司对她们的绩效评价并不会有所提高。此外，男性发言越多，上司就越会觉得他们很能干。但当女性多发言时，上司们却并没有这种感觉。
This speaking-up double bind harms organizations by depriving them of valuable ideas. A University of Texas researcher, Ethan Burris, conducted an experiment in which he asked teams to make strategic decisions for a bookstore. He randomly informed one member that the bookstore’s inventory system was flawed and gave that person data about a better approach. In subsequent analyses, he found that when women challenged the old system and suggested a new one, team leaders viewed them as less loyal and were less likely to act on their suggestions. Even when all team members were informed that one member possessed unique information that would benefit the group, suggestions from women with inside knowledge were discounted.
女性发言遭受的这种双重约束扼杀了宝贵的意见，给公司造成了损失。德克萨斯大学的研究员伊桑·伯里斯(Ethan Burris)开展过一项实验，要求一些团队为一家书店制定战略决策。然后他随机挑选一名成员，告诉此人书店的库存系统存在缺陷，并给该成员提供了一些支持更优方案的数据。在随后的分析中，他发现，当女性成员挑战旧机制，并建议采用一个新的方案时，团队领导者认为她的忠诚度较低，而且按照她的建议采取行动的可能性也较小。即使团队所有成员都被告知，某个成员掌握了有利于团队的独家信息，但如果这个成员是女性，她提出的建议仍然会遭到轻视。
Obviously, businesses need to find ways to interrupt this gender bias. Just as orchestras that use blind auditions increase the number of women who are selected, organizations can increase women’s contributions by adopting practices that focus less on the speaker and more on the idea. For example, in innovation tournaments, employees submit suggestions and solutions to problems anonymously. Experts evaluate the proposals, give feedback to all participants and then implement the best plans.
显然，企业需要想办法终止这种性别偏见。进行盲听试奏的管弦乐团会选择更多的女性，同理，企业也可以引入一些举措，减少对讲者本身的关注，多留意想法，这样就可以增加女性的参与。例如在创新竞赛中，员工匿名提交建议和问题的解决方案。专家评估提案，给所有参赛人意见反馈，然后实施最佳的方案。
SINCE most work cannot be done anonymously, leaders must also take steps to encourage women to speak and be heard. At “The Shield,” Mr. Mazzara, the show runner, found a clever way to change the dynamics that were holding those two female employees back. He announced to the writers that he was instituting a no-interruption rule while anyone — male or female — was pitching. It worked, and he later observed that it made the entire team more effective.
由于多数的工作不能匿名完成，领导者一定要采取措施，鼓励女性发声，并让她们的声音被人听到。在《盾牌》剧组里，作为剧集主管的马扎拉想到了一个聪明的办法，改变了导致两名女编剧缄默不言的风气。他向编剧们宣布了一项规定，任何人——无论男女——在提想法的时候，别人都不许插嘴。规则是有效的，他后来发现整个团队变得更有效率。
The long-term solution to the double bind of speaking while female is to increase the number of women in leadership roles. (As we noted in our previous article, research shows that when it comes to leadership skills, although men are more confident, women are more competent.) As more women enter the upper echelons of organizations, people become more accustomed to women’s contributing and leading. Professor Burris and his colleagues studied a credit union where women made up 74 percent of supervisors and 84 percent of front-line employees. Sure enough, when women spoke up there, they were more likely to be heard than men. 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.
对这种女性发言的双重约束，长远的解决办法是增加领导层中的女性人数。(正如我们在以前的文章中已经了解到的，研究表明在领导技巧方面，男性更自信，但女性更胜任。)越来越多的女人正在进入企业的高层，人们也逐渐习惯了女性的意见和领导。伯里斯教授和他的同事对一家信用合作社进行了研究，那里有 74%的管理人员和84%的一线员工是女性。毫无疑问，那里的女人发言时，被听取的可能性要高过男性。在2014年的最后一次新闻发布会上，奥巴马总统回答了八名记者的问题——全部是女性。此举登上了世界各地的报章。但如果一个政治人士只给男人提问的机会，那就不会是新闻;那是寻常的一天。
