At live audience events, women are often outnumbered by men when it comes to asking questions. And it's a surprisingly difficult habit to break.
Over the years I've presented dozens of radio shows and chaired hundreds of public events in front of live audiences. The Q&A at the end is an important part of the session and so I want everyone to feel comfortable enough to ask their burning question. But however much I try to make people feel relaxed, as the hands go up, there are always more men than women ready to ask a question and often those first hands all belong to men.
For example a study by Shoshana Jarvis from University of California, Berkeley, published in 2022, observed who asked questions at a conference that included everyone from biologists to astrophysicists and economists. This was one of those conferences where if you want to ask a question you have to leave your seat and stand in a queue in front of a microphone while everyone else watches you.
In the US, Jarvis found that women tended to say that they felt too anxious to ask a question, while men said that if they didn't ask a question they were holding back in order to give others space, suggesting that some men areTwice as many men as women said they were motivated to ask a question because they felt they had spotted a mistake. This may sound mean, but these are academic events where speakers responding to criticism is all part of the process.
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