Speaking while female, and at a disadvantage

Women's voices are often missing and discounted in public affairs, even when they have seats at the tables of power. They speak less, make fewer motions and are more often subject to negative interruptions. Similar patterns prevail online.

If they feel at a disadvantage speaking as women, it's because they are. In settings as varied as school boards, Vermont town meetings, community meetings in rural Indian villages and online news sites worldwide, researchers have quantified how women's voices are underrepresented.

Women take up just a quarter to a third of discussion time where policy is discussed and decisions made, except when they are in the majority. But researchers also found practices that could make a big difference.

One result of the gender imbalance in discussions is that democratic institutions may not accurately reflect the will of the people, especially on issues of particular concern to women, such as care for children, older people and the disabled, scholars and female officials say.

[The skin-tight surprise 300 women delivered to man who disparaged yoga pants]

"Women still have confidence in their views, even when they see that their status is low," said Tali Mendelberg, a Princeton University professor who is co-author of "The Silent Sex: Gender, Deliberation and Institutions," a study from Princeton and Brigham Young University published in 2015. "But they're not confident that what they have to say is valued, and that in turn shapes how willing they are to speak, and what is discussed. Society signals that the domains of power are still reserved for men."

Toni Carter, elected in 2005 to the Board of Commissioners in Ramsey County, Minnesota, said she struggled to advance the agenda she'd come to office with: overhauling the juvenile justice system, improving education and bringing light rail service to some of St. Paul's low-income neighborhoods.

"Sometimes, my voice would just sit there, almost like nothing was said," said Carter, who nonetheless did go on to accomplish some of her goals by building networks among policymakers, experts and civic groups. "You have to develop allegiances and teams."

For example, when the path of St. Paul's light rail service was under discussion, Carter encouraged community groups to come to meetings to talk about the child care issues of female riders, who typically make more stops on public transit.

"I may have accustomed myself to the fact that I'm not always heard at first, but there are strategies to make sure the agenda can be accomplished," Carter said.

Kelly Dittmar, a professor with the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University, said female officials at all levels say they share Carter's experience: "Women know the reception is going to be skeptical, so they wait to speak up until they have overwhelming evidence and support."

Women's silence also extends to discussion of public affairs on the internet, where women's voices are outnumbered 3-1 in news comments, according to data from the University of Sydney and Stanford University.

A similar imbalance is seen in comments to articles in The New York Times. About a quarter of comments have names identifiable as female, another study showed. Women's participation was highest in stereotypically female subject areas such as parenting, fashion and health.

The divides that appear in the comments suggest that women's opinions can be underrepresented in other institutions. When The New York Times published a letter by Dylan Farrow in 2014 in which she alleged abuse by the director Woody Allen, an analysis showed that comments from men were about evenly divided between sympathy for Allen and for his accuser. Female commenters overwhelmingly took Farrow's side.

"Regardless of whether you believe Dylan Farrow's story, the gender gap in sympathy (which several other studies have found as well) should trouble you," wrote Emma Pierson, who has written widely on statistics and is now a doctoral student at Stanford University. "It implies that in Congress, the police or the military, where women are underrepresented, opinions will be skewed against survivors of sexual assault."

[Alaska lawyer says Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas groped her in 1999]

At Vermont town meetings, one quintessential democratic institution, women's attendance is now close to equal. However, women still take just 38 percent of the speaking turns, said Frank Bryan, a retired University of Vermont professor who has been tallying participation since 1970. That year, women took 20 percent of the speaking turns.

"The women's movement did result in a huge increase in women's participation," Bryan said. "It still takes a lot of moxie to get up and speak."

The takeaway from the Princeton and Brigham Young study is that women's low participation can be increased. The researchers undertook a large experiment assigning people to groups under controlled conditions, varying the gender makeup and asking groups to make decisions either by majority rule or unanimous agreement. The idea was that women's voices would need to be heard for unanimous agreement, but were at risk of being marginalized under majority rule.

Then the researchers tested the experimental data against school boards in 20 states selected to reflect various gender balances and community sizes. School boards were chosen because they are a traditional area for women's involvement and because women frequently have a majority of the seats. The real-life results were consistent with those of the experiment.

The researchers found that women rarely spoke in proportion to their representation until they made up a majority of the board. Women's speaking turns and their number of motions offered also improve some when a woman is leading the committee, the data show.

When women were outnumbered on a school board, scholars found, 88 percent of the time they spoke in proportions lower than their representation. When men were outnumbered, their participation did not suffer.

Public institutions can adopt rules to ensure equal floor time, and to monitor the negative interruptions that cut off women's voices, Mendelberg says.

"Women speak more and express their opinions when the group signals that it welcomes their voices," Mendelberg said. "It also helps when the group uses a lot of positive interjections. This creates a group dynamic of mutual acceptance that allows everyone to express what's really on their minds with less fear of social rejection."

For Carter, the Minnesota county commissioner, the way to get women's voices heard echoes the research findings from Princeton and Brigham Young. "In the long run, we have the responsibility to create institutions that are actively listening, creating space for female officials and minorities," Carter said. "Our way of listening has to change."