This could be less true for other sectors but in essence a day in financial industry corporate life can be described as: should I speak up, did I speak down, can I speak more, do I speak to the right people, am I using too much technical jargon speak, am I speaking well, does someone speak for me, do I f…g need to speak at all.
It is exhausting.
To speak or not to speak summarizes in five words a whole side of corporate culture. One could even say speaking, talking and communicating is the key definer of a career evolution in the financial system.
To compound this, if there was such a thing as a summary motto of the biases within the financial sector, it would have been Thou Shalt Not Speak.
Thou Shalt Not Speak, especially if you are told so by someone more important to the institution than you.
Thou Shalt Not Speak. Or be scorned by peers you disagree with, be called an ignorant by those you dare question, be deemed a ninny by some, and a bullheaded reckless risk taking strong minded fool by many.
And of course, Thou Shalt Not Speak. About how much you are paid and compensated.
And make no mistake, to speak up with a high pitched feminine voice only makes it worse.
There is well documented literature on the difficulties women face to speak and be heard in the workplace. If I were to cite one report, the Women in the Workplace 2024 report | McKinsey has a lot of statistics, one of which is titled “women experience in the workplace has not improved”. It shows in particular that the share of women being spoken over or interrupted more than others has doubled in the past two years (from 20% to 40%). Yeah, take that box-checking DEI effort. This stat is for you.
But there are other facets behind the Thou Shalt Not Speak type hurdles.
A few years ago I was invited to a training at a very respected institution. A military General was giving one of the sessions focused on decision-making in time of crisis. One of the examples struck with me, that of a military leader who basically outlined the risks of a certain military maneuver as well as the flaw of the tactic envisaged by his commanders.
He was not listened to, with disastrous consequences. For you see, he had a strong accent, as he was from an ally country to the army he was working with. And because of that he was mocked overtly as not as smart and not as strategic as the others.
At the end, the general making the presentation asked the auditorium: could those with an accent that felt they were ignored in a similar way stand up. Believe me, there were more people standing than sitting down.
This made me realize that having an accent can be a big challenge. I noticed two things: senior people often tried hard to hide their accents, while those who embraced the “come as you are” philosophy usually weren’t seniors.
I started also noticing how others were responding to both categories, and how different that response was in both cases from those who were native English speakers (I worked mainly in English speaking environments).
Based on my circumstantial evidence, intervening in a meeting with an accent was more likely to lead to a dismissal of the speaker or a feedback later on that the person need to improve their communication style without any specifics.
If you have read other articles of this blog, you might know I like illustrating with related research. Needless to say, I found a lot of literature.
Ivona Hideg, Winny Shen, and Christy Zhou Koval wrote a paper titled “Hear, hear! A review of accent discrimination at work,” published in Volume 60 of Current Opinion in Psychology in 2024.
The paper is a literature review discussing how people with accents are often stigmatized due to stereotypes. Research highlights that difficulties an audience faces in understanding accented speech can lead them to think the communicator is not effective. It also flags emerging areas of focus such as intersectionality between accents and other discrimination characteristics, for example.
An article from the website “The conversation” [1] cites research that often people with an accent are deemed as less intelligent, or lead them to be less trusted.
so Thou Shalt Not Speak with an accent I guess.
It would be incomplete not to acknowledge, that compared to ten years ago, there has been a lot of progress. It is now rare to be in a meeting or a committee or a forum without a woman pushing for her ideas, making her point and voicing her opinion. Firms are also much more aware of accent bias, whether regional or international, and trying to correct for it.
However, here is a a very common anecdote, that I am sure many women have a similar version to in their lived experience.
Setting: important meeting with the senior leadership of a department, at a large firm. Four men and two women are attending.
Discussion: How to implement a technical policy.
Man 1, man 2, and man 3 go into a lengthy discussion on how to interpret the policy and what it means etc.
Woman 1: trying to interject a few times (with an accent).
Man 2, Man 4, Woman 2: discuss that maybe the team needs to better understand the technical element of it.
Woman 1: finally gets a word in and explains what the policy actually means to address in practice, and answers some of the questions that arose in the previous conversation. Pauses for any needed clarification.
Man 1 (also manager of the department): “yeah thanks for this. helpful. So Man 2 do you want to reach out to [someone else] to ask them the questions?”
Woman 1: but we can save time, I gave you the answers
Man 1: yeah but you know, we need the expert on this
Woman 1: I wrote the technical policy…
Cited sources:
[2] How accent bias can impact a person’s job prospects
(*) some elements have been modified or made vague, to avoid any attribution to any specific firm or people.
Other sources (non-exhaustive)
How To Get Women To Speak Up More At Work | Smith School
Recap: Accents in the Workplace – Social Mobility Commission
Talking proper – could accent bias harm your job prospects? – Languages, Linguistics and Film
Disclaimers can be found here.
A WOMAN IN THE CITY 