When President Obama took office, two-thirds of his top aides were men. Women complained of having to elbow their way into important meetings. And when they got in, their voices were sometimes ignored. Across sectors, and both in and outside work, women get interrupted more often than men—by people of both genders. The interruption disparity, backed up by decades of research, is now so recognized there’s a word for it: manterrupting.
But at the White House, female staffers explained to the Washington Post they adopted a meeting strategy they called “amplification”: When a woman made a key point, other women would repeat it, giving credit to its author. This forced the men in the room to recognize the contribution — and denied them the chance to claim the idea as their own.
“We just started doing it, and made a purpose of doing it. It was an everyday thing,” said one former Obama aide who requested anonymity to speak frankly. Obama noticed, she and others said, and began calling more often on women and junior aides.
For decades, women have struggled to crack the code of power in the White House, where grueling hours, hyper-aggressive colleagues and lack of access to the boss have proved challenging to women from both parties. The West Wing is also home to the ultimate glass ceiling: Men have had a lock on the Oval Office for more than 200 years.
Click here to know more.
When President Obama took office, two-thirds of his top aides were men. Women complained of having to elbow their way into important meetings. And when they got in, their voices were sometimes ignored. Across sectors, and both in and outside work, women get interrupted more often than men—by people of both genders. The interruption disparity, backed up by decades of research, is now so recognized there’s a word for it: manterrupting.
But at the White House, female staffers explained to the Washington Post they adopted a meeting strategy they called “amplification”: When a woman made a key point, other women would repeat it, giving credit to its author. This forced the men in the room to recognize the contribution — and denied them the chance to claim the idea as their own.
“We just started doing it, and made a purpose of doing it. It was an everyday thing,” said one former Obama aide who requested anonymity to speak frankly. Obama noticed, she and others said, and began calling more often on women and junior aides.
For decades, women have struggled to crack the code of power in the White House, where grueling hours, hyper-aggressive colleagues and lack of access to the boss have proved challenging to women from both parties. The West Wing is also home to the ultimate glass ceiling: Men have had a lock on the Oval Office for more than 200 years.
Click here to know more.
