Photo cred: The University News.
Recently, an article was published about women in White
House using a technique called “amplification” in order to increase the
likelihood that women’s ideas and voices would be heard rather than ignored by
the men (The Washington Post). Women would repeat ideas from each other while
giving credit to the original individual (The Washington Post). I found this
article intriguing, and it seemed to answer another question a colleague and I
had been discussing. She is a white woman in my cohort, and I am a Hispanic
woman. She has verbalized to me that she wants to learn how to ally for women
of color in our program but what is a strategy that she could learn and
utilize?
I pondered
this for several weeks and it was not until I read this article that I found a
really excellent starting point. Women, by default, are generally not listened
to as much as men are. Women of color even less so. The idea of amplification struck
me as something that all women in a higher education program can engage in for
one another. Amplification can cross race, ethnicity, sexual orientation,
gender identification, and position in the program. Amplification is easy and
simple to engage in and it requires one thing taught across all masters and
doctoral psychology programs: active listening. Listen to your fellow women in
your program and help them get their ideas heard by people who would otherwise
ignore them. In the White House, women found that amplification served to
increase the number of women who were invited to important meetings with
President Obama and increased the number of women he would refer to for
feedback and ideas (The Washington Post). This effect can be recreated in
academia and other psychological professions across the country by women
starting to engage in this practice.
A humorous
anecdote was relayed to me from a friend I have in another doctoral program. In
her class, there was a male presenter struggling to get a link to work using
Internet Explorer, however the link refused to work. After watching the
presenter attempt to open the link multiple times, a female peer of his spoke
up about how perhaps the male student should attempt to open the link with Google
Chrome. This suggestion was not acknowledged and the presenter continued
attempting to open the link with Internet Explorer, to the frustration of his
student peer audience. Shortly after, a second woman peer suggested using
Google Chrome. At this point, my friend emphatically stated that the entire
classroom heard both of these women suggest the same thing only for it to again
not be heard or acknowledged by the presenter. Finally, after the presenter
almost gave up on the link, the professor – a woman – suggested using Google
Chrome. To the students’ chagrin, the presenter followed his professor’s
suggestion and successfully opened the link with Google Chrome. While my friend
told me this story as part of a venting session to process her frustration out
the male student ignoring his women peers, I saw it as an example of women
combating the very thing my friend was frustrated about. Whether it was
purposeful, eventually the presenter acknowledged that first peer’s idea of
trying another browser to open his presentation link.
While this
is a small scale example of amplification at work, it demonstrates that women
may not be heard until the third or fourth iteration of an idea. Whether the
student intended to overlook two of his women peers’ suggestion, the reality is
that he did. Despite them saying the suggestion loud enough to be heard by the
rest of the classroom, even the professor. This anecdote also demonstrates the
power of amplification at work. This is officially a call to women, regardless
of how you identify, in higher education to begin purposefully utilizing
amplification in your professional and personal worlds. Help your fellow woman
get heard so that women are invited in larger number to important meetings. Let
our sisters in the White House serve as an example of women raising women up.
Let us use our collective voices to make sure we get heard, even if it takes
three or four iterations of the ideas.
Written by Johanna Riojas, BA
References: Eilperin, J. (2016). White House women want to
be in the room where it happens. The
Washington Post.
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