By: Angela Dejene
All right, women. Raise your hand if you’ve been talked over by men while trying to make an important point in a meeting. Raise your hand if some guy has hijacked your idea, without giving credit. Raise your hand if the men simply go silent when you conclude a remark.
Amplification. Amplification by women in the White House is what the article below is about. And women can use the strategy anywhere.
Amplification is when other women repeat, support and ratify other women in a meeting, so our voices aren’t lost in the din of male voices.
It is encouraging to see women in leadership positions are finding ways to support each other. But this stuff is exhausting.
The article demonstrates a stark reality for many professional women when a majority of their colleagues are men: Time that could be spent with colleagues on creative and strategic issues of substance is spent strategizing against sexism instead.
The women in the White House talk of “waiting until the second term” when male colleagues leave to “get” a voice at the table.
The rest of us don’t have that opportunity. We all know women who move on to another opportunity out of frustration. That often ends in the cycle just repeating itself inside new walls.
But this is one strategy worth using. Amplification.
Read original story Washington Post story here.
Angela Dejene is executive vice president of Crosswind Media and PR.
