Editor: the following is an extract from a NY Times article, the full text can be found @: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/14/business/women-sexism-work-huffington-kamala-harris.html?_r=0
Business Day
The Universal Phenomenon of Men Interrupting Women
For women in business and beyond, it was an I-told-you-so day.
The twin spectacles Tuesday — an Uber board member’s wisecrack about women talking too much, and Senator Kamala Harris, Democrat of California, being interrupted
for the second time in a week by her male colleagues — triggered an
outpouring of recognition and what has become almost ritual social-media
outrage.
Academic
studies and countless anecdotes make it clear that being interrupted,
talked over, shut down or penalized for speaking out is nearly a
universal experience for women when they are outnumbered by men.
After Arianna Huffington, an Uber director, spoke of how important it was to increase the number of women on the board, David Bonderman said that would mean more talking. He soon resigned
from the board. Even in companies without notorious bro-cultures,
however, women have had to struggle to feel heard and, as the numbers
make clear, to advance to the top.
“I
think every woman who has any degree of power and those who don’t knows
how it feels to experience what Kamala Harris experienced yesterday,”
said Laura R. Walker, the president and chief executive of New York
Public Radio. “To be in a situation where you’re trying to do your job
and you’re either cut off or ignored.”
Senator
Harris, a former prosecutor, assertively questioned Attorney General
Jeff Sessions during his testimony before the Senate Intelligence
Committee. Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona, interrupted and
chided her to let Mr. Sessions answer her questions. Soon after that,
Senator Richard Burr, Republican of North Carolina and the committee
chairman, cut her off, saying her time had elapsed.
Women
in a wide range of industries, at all levels, offered hundreds of such
examples in response to an invitation from The New York Times for people
to share their personal experiences on Facebook. “I can’t even count
the number of times I’ve witnessed a woman being interrupted and talked
over by a man, only to hear him later repeat the same ideas she was
trying to put forward,” wrote one respondent, Grace Ellis. “I’d say I
see this happen … two to three times a week? At least?”
Joyce
Lionarons wrote, “My female boss told me she needed to allow each man
to interrupt her four times before protesting in a meeting. If she
protested more often, there were problems.”
Erica
Brown wrote that she has worked for three months as a distiller.
Virtually every time she goes to pick up supplies, she said, the staff
asked her husband what she needed.
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