Why do men ask more questions than women in scientific seminars?

The world of work is a man's world: women are paid almost 20% less than their male counterparts. With equal experience, men are promoted more easily, mothers are less likely to be hired, while fathers are paid more.

Alecia Carter, University of Montpellier

Successful women are less appreciated - but the opposite is true for men. The status of women has improved over the last 30 years, but this improvement is running out of steam: inequalities between men and women in the workplace still have a long way to go.

Find out more:
Gender pay gap: a conversation with Isabelle Bensidoun

Sexism and the academic world

The world of research is no exception. While 59% of women hold a bachelor's degree, only 21% are professors, giving rise to the image of the "leaky pipeline ".
A number of explanations have been put forward: men and women may differ in terms of intelligence, career choices, investment in children's education; their CVs may be assessed differently; differences in salary may lead to differences in behavior; women may suffer more from imposter syndrome (lack of self-confidence) or lack female role models. Whatever the cause, the bottom line is this: prominent figures in science are rarely women.

To find out more:
Student evaluations of teaching and gender stereotypes

Why should we care? Having role models to look up to contributes greatly to career choices (we're motivated when we can identify with a successful role model).
Unfortunately, women's lack of visibility, which probably contributes to "leaks in the pipeline", is not restricted to the most eminent positions: men are more often first or last authors of publications (the most prestigious positions), men's articles are more often cited, men are more often invited to symposia, and men ask more questions at scientific conferences.
But all this has little to do with the start of an academic career.

Men ask more questions than women

So what happens when vocations are formed? For most students, research seminars represent the first contact with an assembly of researchers, the first opportunity to attend or participate in scientific debates.
The modest weekly seminar is not just there for a speaker to present his work to his community: it is an essential training moment, immersing future researchers in a culture, and can forge lasting impressions by highlighting the leading figures in the disciplinary field and the recipes for success. It is therefore important to know who asks the questions after the presentation.
We have collected data on this subject in 10 countries, representing almost 250 seminars. For the most part, the audience at these seminars was evenly balanced between men and women, at least in the sample of seminars we (and the colleagues who helped us) attended in biology, psychology and philosophy. But a question was on average 2.5 times more likely to be asked by a man than by a woman. Men were therefore much more visible than women in the audience.

One might have thought that this imbalance was due to the hierarchical bias described above (men occupying more positions of responsibility than women, and the highest-ranking asking more questions). But an online questionnaire shows that the imbalance is widespread: among seasoned researchers, men ask more questions than women, and it's the same at the start of their careers.
Furthermore, the proportion of female professors does not explain the imbalance between men and women in the questions asked at a given seminar. Men just ask more questions than women.

How can this disparity be explained?

Where does this imbalance come from? There are two possible reasons: either women ask for the floor less often, or they are given it less readily than men. The two mechanisms may be concomitant, and we have observed the latter at work in concrete cases. But our data suggest that the first reason is the most important - women say it well, they ask fewer questions - and also help us to understand why.
When we ask people why they refrain from asking a question when they have one, women, more than men, put forward internal reasons (they lack courage or are impressed by the speaker) - on the other hand, men and women show no difference when it comes to external reasons, such as lack of time. Our study thus suggests that women'sinternalization of the gender stereotype explains the observed imbalance.

To find out more:
Gender stereotypes are detrimental to women's health... and men's.

Why is this a problem and what can be done about it?

It's not necessarily a problem that men ask more questions than women. It is if it has consequences in terms of training and helps maintain the "leaky pipeline" dynamic.
So it's not a question of pressuring everyone to ask questions during meetings or seminars. Nor is it about pressuring women to be more assertive, or suggesting that men should refrain from asking questions. Rather, it is to realize that the observed imbalance, determined by sociological and psychological causes, feeds the imbalance between men and women in science.
We can therefore hope that improving the visibility of women at the earliest and most crucial stages of their careers will help to balance the profession at all levels.

In the meantime, small changes in behavior can have major consequences.
According to our data, two elements are associated with a better balance between speaking times: a longer question time and a first question asked by a woman. Unfortunately, this is only a correlation, and even if manipulating these parameters seems a simple way of solving the problem, we haven't yet tried the experiment.
The most virtuous practice I've observed is to have a moderator who allocates the floor in the order in which audience members request it, constantly observing the assembly. This prevents wild speeches or people forgetting to speak when a tide of arms rises in the last row after the first speaker has broken the ice by asking the first question. A short pause before the questions can also help audience members (and the speaker...) to gather their thoughts.
For now, our advice to everyone, speakers, moderators or audience members, is to be aware of unconscious bias when asking questions. But the golden rule for moderators and audience alike is to ask your questions as you'd like to be asked them; speak in your turn, not to show off - and for moderators: don't forget those raised hands waiting patiently in the back row.
Alecia CarterEco-ethologist, Institut des Sciences de l'Évolution, University of Montpellier
Visit original version of this article was published on The Conversation.