Claudia Hammond
Function, BBC future
Over the years I have hosted dozens of radio shows and hundreds of public events live in front of audiences.
Questions from the audience at the end are an important part of each session and I want everyone to feel comfortable enough to ask the question that is burning them.
But no matter how hard I try to relax the audience, when people start raising their hands, there will always be more men than women ready to ask a question, and often the first hands raised belong only to men.
It's possible, of course, that women have fewer questions they want to ask, which is perfectly legitimate.
- How patriarchy really came about
- Female power in the world of video games in Serbia
- Nobel Prize in Economics to American women for work on the gender wage gap
But countless times, in the women's restroom lines after an event, women in the audience tell me what question they wanted to ask, but didn't.
That's a great question every time.
Anecdotal experiences are not reliable data, so years and years of such experiences led me to look for statistics.
Most of the research on this topic has been conducted by observing audiences at academic conferences rather than at events open to the widest audience, but they are still informative.
Evidence suggests that my experience is not an isolated sighting. That's the norm.
For example, a study by Shoshana Jarvis of the University of California, Berkeley, published in 2022, tracked who was asking questions at a conference attended by everyone from biologists to astrophysicists to economists.
This was one of those conferences where if you want to ask a question you have to leave the seat and stand in line in front of the microphone while everyone else is looking at you.
Of the delegates, 63 percent were men, so you'd expect 63 percent of the questions to come from men, but actually men asked 78 percent of the questions.
Studies show that women are less likely to ask questions
The same thing happened when 250 academic seminars in 10 countries were the subject of a study led by Alessia Carter, today at University College London.
She discovered that they were women two and a half times less inclined to ask the question than men despite the fact that the ratio of men and women present is on average equal.
It is true that in these studies the observers only monitored the questions that were asked, not who all raised their hands in hopes of asking a question, so there is a possibility that the moderators chose to only hear questions from men.
But the repeated experience that men ask more questions has led some in academia to call them sessions "questions and answers".
So what turns some women off?
It seems not because they have nothing to ask.
Alessija Carter analyzed the answers in surveys of 600 academics from 20 countries.
It was interesting to see that both men and women claim that they did not ask the question, even though they had something to ask.
But women were more likely to say that the reason they didn't do it was because they didn't have the courage to ask it, they were worried that they misunderstood the context, that the speaker was too eminent or intimidating, or that they thought they weren't smart enough to ask a good question themselves.
No one wants to be the person who asks a question only to be told in front of three hundred people that they missed the point.
But this study shows that the possibility could be a deterrent to women.
Twice as many men as women said they were motivated to ask the question because they thought they had noticed a mistake.
In the US, Jarvis found that women tended to say they were too nervous to pop the question, while men said that if they didn't pop the question, they held back to give others space, suggesting that some men take active steps not to dominate those sessions.
Twice as many men as women said they were motivated to ask the question because they thought they had noticed a mistake.
It might sound mean, but these are academic events where the speaker's response to criticism is an integral part of the process.
The research also looked at the nature of the questions asked by men and women.
It is sometimes argued that men are more inclined to ask longer questions or try to ask more than one question at a time (I can't believe how often when I say we only have time for one more quick question, the person I call on starts with three questions ).
But men are not the only criminals here.
When Jillian Sandstrom of the University of Sussex analyzed more than 900 questions asked at 160 live conferences or public festivals, in a study awaiting publication, she found no difference in this context based on gender.
When the woman did ask the question, it was as long or from several parts as a man's.
When other question characteristics were compared, such as starting by greeting the speaker, giving a compliment, or introducing oneself, the only variation between men and women was that women were more likely to greet the speaker.
To be noticed
You could argue that since there isn't time for everyone to ask a question anyway, if some people don't come forward on their own, then it doesn't really matter.
The problem is that if half the audience is less willing to engage, then you may not get as diverse and interesting a range of questions as you would otherwise.
So far, research has mostly focused on men and women, but it would be interesting to see if other underrepresented or marginalized groups refrain from asking questions they would like to know the answer to.
In a work environment, asking questions can get you noticed and if you want the best jobs, then visibility is important to you.
In a study conducted at a conference in France, researcher Junhanlu Zheng of the Pasteur Institute found that people are more likely to remember the names of people who keep asking questions.
Of course, this does not mean that their names were necessarily remembered in a positive context.
Maybe they are remembered for being boring people who keep asking some questions!
So the only real difference concerns who actually voluntarily agrees to ask the questions.
Another problem with women generally asking questions less often is that women early in their academic careers have less visible role models among other women who show them that you shouldn't be afraid to ask questions.
The solution
So what could be done to encourage more women to ask questions if they want to?
At first glance, the pandemic could have shown us one of the ways.
When events were forced to move online, a new opportunity arose to ask questions without having to say the words out loud - you could instead type them on a screen, sometimes anonymously.
There is no awkward waiting with your hand up, half hoping and half fearing that you will be called, no worrying if the microphone is working or if you will stutter while asking a question and everyone is looking at you.
And more and more live events use applications where you send a question over the phone, and the presenter receives a list of questions on a tablet.
Even better, if your question was answered while your mind wandered elsewhere (always a fear of mine when I'm in the audience), then the host, whose job it is to keep track of it, won't ask the guests that question. They will just ignore him.
That, then, could certainly remove some of the nervousness and women would certainly be able to ask the same number of questions as men at online events, right?
Alas, no according to the study by Zheng.
If a man asks the first question, fewer women follow up with questions.
Zheng recorded the number of questions asked by women and men at a French bioinformatics conference held online in June 2021.
This is a field in which until recently the majority of delegates were men, but when the conference moved online, it was attended by an almost equal number of men and women.
Again, men asked 115 questions, while women asked only 57.
Age also played a role, with men over 35 asking more than nine times as many questions as younger women and gender minorities.
Sandstrom believes moderators play a role in getting attendees relaxed enough to ask a question.
In the Ženg study, the leader's gender did not play a role.
But there may be strategies a moderator could use to make a difference.
It has been observed that if a man asks the first question, fewer women come forward with questions after him.
It's almost like the tone is set for the rest of the session.
So, one of the solutions could be to choose a woman for the first question and ideally someone who is not much older.
Of course, this only works if the younger woman has already raised her hand.
When no women wanted to ask a question, I would occasionally speak to the audience about research in this field and ask openly if there were any women who would like to be the first.
Call a short break for preparation
The same research reveals an alternative option - announcing a short break between the keynote speaker or panel and the start of the question-and-answer session.
It's a clever plan because it gives people a chance to test their question on their neighbors in the audience.
I tried this and you end up getting a lot more questions because people have a chance to check that the question isn't stupid or already commented while your mind was wandering.
It has also been found that women ask more questions in longer sessions, so there may be an argument for allowing more time for questions from the audience, although I realize this is not something everyone would welcome.
At the moment we have to rely on research conducted in an academic environment, but it would certainly be interesting to know if the same is true for other public events.
The advantage of these latter strategies is that they not only help women but anyone who feels marginalized and less likely to speak up.
Follow us on Facebook, Twitter i Viber. If you have a topic proposal for us, contact us at bbcnasrpskom@bbc.co.uk
Bonus video:
