科学美国人60秒 女性CEO改变公司谈论女性的方式（在线收听）

Female CEOs Change How Firms Talk about Women

女性CEO改变公司谈论女性的方式

Karen Hopkin: This is Scientific American’s 60-Second Science. I’m Karen Hopkin.

Think of a top executive at a powerhouse company. You’re no doubt imagining someone who’s confident and clever, decisive and determined. And, though it pains me to say it, you’re probably picturing a man. The sad thing is, you wouldn’t be too far off the mark.

凯伦·霍普金：这是《科学美国人》的60秒科学。我是凯伦·霍普金。

想想一家实力雄厚的公司的高管。毫无疑问，你想象的是一个自信、聪明、果断、果断的人。虽然我很难说，但你可能在想象一个男人。可悲的是，你不会离目标太远。

Asher Lawson: Around only 7 percent of S&P 500 CEOs are women, despite women making up 50 percent of the population.

阿舍·劳森：尽管女性占总人口的50%，但在标准普尔500指数的首席执行官中，女性仅占7%。

Hopkin: That’s Asher Lawson, a graduate student at Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business. He says that one way to even the playing field might be to change the way we think about…and talk about…leadership. And he and his colleagues have found that organizations are more likely to describe women using words that are typically associated with achievement if they have female CEOs. Their findings appear in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

霍普金：这位是阿舍·劳森，杜克大学福卡商学院的研究生。他说，一种平衡竞争环境的方法可能是改变我们思考……和谈论……领导力的方式。他和他的同事们发现，如果组织中有女性CEO，那么他们更可能使用通常与成就相关的词语来描述女性。他们的发现发表在《美国国家科学院院刊》上。

Lawson: Gender inequality has been deemed the “greatest human rights challenge of our time” by the United Nations. In our research we’re interested in specifically some of the factors that perpetuate  these gender inequities…as well as the downstream consequences of those gender stereotypes.

劳森：性别不平等被联合国视为“我们时代最大的人权挑战”。在我们的研究中，我们特别感兴趣的是使这些性别不平等长期存在的一些因素……以及这些性别陈规定型观念的下游后果

Hopkin: To get at the roots of these stereotypes, Lawson and his team took a closer look at corporate speak  — and the words businesses use when referring to women.

霍普金：为了找出这些陈规定型观念的根源，劳森和他的团队仔细研究了企业用语，以及企业在提到女性时使用的词语。

Lawson: So we’re really interested in language because it gives us this deep insight into how people are thinking about women in a way that doesn’t rely on them reporting it themselves.

Hopkin: Now, coming straight out and asking companies how they feel about females can lead to some fanciful forecasting.

劳森：所以我们对语言很感兴趣，因为它让我们深入了解人们是如何看待女性的，而不是依赖于他们自己去报道。

霍普金：现在，直截了当地问公司他们对女性的感觉如何，可能会导致一些幻想的预测。

Lawson: So if you ask organizations whether they believe in gender equity or whether they’re interested in fairness, because of social desirability concerns, they’ll nearly always say yes.

劳森：所以，如果你问组织是否相信性别平等，或者出于社会愿望的考虑，他们是否对公平感兴趣，他们几乎总是会说是的。

Hopkin: To find out if businesses talk the talk AND walk the walk, the researchers parsed the shareholder reports and investor documents of S&P 500 companies. Using natural language processing techniques, they analyzed some 43,000 files…containing more than 1.2 billion words…and they looked for associations between words that signify women…like she and her…and words typically associated with leadership…like assertive or ambitious or effective.

霍普金：为了找出企业是否言行一致，研究人员分析了标准普尔500指数公司的股东报告和投资者文件。利用自然语言处理技术，他们分析了大约43000个文件……包含12亿多个单词……他们寻找表示女性的单词之间的关联……比如她和她……以及通常与领导力相关的单词之间的关联……比如自信、雄心勃勃或有效。

Lawson: One way to think of it is if you had an autocomplete system like you use on your phone and you said “she is…” it would be like, how likely is it that the next word is powerful?

Hopkin: Once they assessed this association…

劳森：一种想法是，如果你有一个像你在手机上使用的自动补全系统，你说“她是……”，那么，下一个词有多大可能强大？

霍普金：一旦他们评估了这种联系…

Lawson: We then asked: how do these associations change when you hire women as leaders? And we saw the same pattern across all of this data: that hiring women as senior leaders led to an increased association with those leadership-congruent traits.

劳森：然后我们问：当你雇佣女性担任领导时，这些协会会发生什么变化？我们在所有这些数据中都看到了相同的模式：雇佣女性担任高级领导会增加与这些领导特质的关联。

Hopkin: And it wasn’t that the companies were extolling the virtues of their own specific staff.

Lawson: So it’s not just discussion of those new CEOs and board members. It actually generalizes to discussion of women more broadly. So we were heartened to see this result.

霍普金：这并不是说这些公司在颂扬自己特定员工的美德。

劳森：所以这不仅仅是讨论那些新的首席执行官和董事会成员。它实际上更广泛地概括了对女性的讨论。因此，看到这一结果，我们感到振奋。

Hopkin: At the same time, they wondered whether there might be any backlash…in other words, when a woman is seen as more competent, is she then considered to be less compassionate and considerate.

霍普金：与此同时，他们想知道是否会有任何反弹……换句话说，当一个女人被认为更有能力时，她是否会被认为缺乏同情心和体贴。

Lawson: Happily, we saw that there was no decreased association with being caring and these kinds of likable traits.

劳森：令人高兴的是，我们发现与关心他人和这些讨人喜欢的特质没有减少联系。

Hopkin: Even better, the data suggests that the organizations that saw the biggest boost in female-linked leadership language are more likely to hire even more women.

霍普金：更妙的是，数据表明，在与女性相关的领导语言方面得到最大提升的组织更有可能雇佣更多的女性。

Lawson: So this highlights the opportunity for a virtuous cycle where the effect can snowball. Appointing women leads women to be more closely associated with these traits that are seen as necessary to be leaders…and this can actually precipitate hiring more women in the future. So it’s a very exciting process to witness.

劳森：因此，这突出了一个良性循环的机会，在这个循环中，影响可能会滚雪球。任命女性会使女性与这些被视为领导者必备的特质更加紧密地联系在一起……这实际上会促使未来雇佣更多女性。所以这是一个非常激动人心的过程。

Hopkin: And something the head honcho will surely write about in her next annual report.

For Scientific American’s 60-Second Science, I’m Karen Hopkin.

霍普金：还有一些事情，主管一定会在她的下一份年度报告中写出来。

《科学美国人》的《60秒科学》，我是凯伦·霍普金。