close up dinosaur through the paper wall
Although my blog post The 40 Best Leadership Quotes has had almost 20,000 views, over 1600 social shares, and many comments, no one seems to have noticed that 85% of the quotes are by women.
Since most of the “best leadership quotes” lists include less than 10% women, you might think a list of 85% would be conspicuous.
I discovered this gross imbalance in 2014 while doing an Internet search for a pithy leadership quote. As I scrolled through a list of 100 leadership quotes, I was struck by how few were by women. I did a counted and found only 7 by women.
The next list titled “Top 25 Leadership Quotes” had only one woman. With my curiosity now piqued, I clicked on nine more lists. The number of women on each list ranged from 1% to 12%.
So what’s going on?
It’s true that the most famous leaders are men. But that doesn’t explain many of the quotes on these lists.
As much as I enjoyed Ken Kesey’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, I never thought of him as a leadership expert. Nor do I think of James Dean as a leadership expert. If you’re going to include literary authors and actors, why not also include some of the great quotes on leadership Maya Angelou or Audrey Hepburn? And many of the quotes are marginally tied to leadership, if at all. And the WORST most popular leadership quotes consistently show up on most of these lists.
This imbalance is not limited to lists of leadership quotes. Look at the ratio of women on any list related to leadership: top leadership speakers, top leadership bloggers, top leadership quotes, top inspirational quotes, top motivational quotes.
Why didn’t anyone notice?
Isn’t it odd that no one noticed my list was skewed in the other direction? It makes me think we’re just not paying attention. The people who create these lists draw from previous lists. People who use quotes simply select from the lists. The skewed representation becomes a continuous loop. And as a result, we end up perpetuating an outdated view of leadership we actually don’t agree with – that leadership belongs primarily to the realm of men.
I suspect that most of the people who created these lists, and those who use them, are not even aware of the imbalance. Nor would they support it if they were. And they want their daughters to have the same professional opportunities as their sons.
Why does it matter?
For a long time we have been aware of the impact of subliminal messages. Neuroscience shows that words and images affect our experience of reality. If you create a grossly unbalanced list or if you use several quotes in your writing and all are by men, you give a subtle message that men are the real leadership experts, which is not the reality.
The reality is there are many excellent quotes by female leaders, and there are as many excellent female leadership bloggers as there are men. The imbalance does not reflect reality.
If we don’t become intentional, we will continue to pass this inaccurate view of who the leadership experts are onto our children. In a recent search for “leadership quotes for kids,” the first list I opened contained 20 quotes, with only one by a woman on the list.
Do you think that doesn’t affect their attitude? On a website where kids vote on their favorite quotes, the top 20 quotes were all by men.
Most interesting and I don’t think it’s because of gender neutrality. When people look at quotes, unless the person being quoted is “famous” or a long-standing character such as Ghandi, Abraham Lincoln, Mother Theresa, Margaret Mead (note the balance of two and two) the focus may be more often on the quote than on the person. That’s just a hunch.
I ascribe value and meaning, or not, to what is being said not necessarily to who is saying it. I may be an anomaly as I am in numerous situations but there you have it.
Thanks for sharing this blog. It’s very important, especially for children who need adult models from both genders.
Great point, Gary. And so here’s where I get confused – since some of the people on these lists are not well-known and/ or connected with leadership (and therefore chosen because they are great quotes), why would they be primarily by men?
I’m with you on this one Jesse Lyn. There is a continued skew toward defining leaders as men. It is changing I grant you that yet I continue to see blog posts chuck full of quotes by men. The “famous women” get quoted yet not as often as men. And credible expert women are quoted infrequently.
Let’s continue to raise this awareness — with awareness comes growth!
Kate
Good thoughts, Kate. With awareness comes growth.
Hi again Jesse
Another thought provoking post, thank you. If I may indulge a little without meaning to be too general…my first reaction is to say that I had not really noticed and now that you have pointed it out I do not think there is anything in it. My view is that a quote is a quote regardless of who said it…if it is worth hearing with an intention to influence then the quote stands on its own. If someone is however researching quotes and discarding women from the list that is another matter. I personally would not waste too much time on the subject or before long we will be into quota’s and I do not think as leaders we need to go there. Kind Regards Raymond
Hi Raymond, I appreciate your thoughts. You are not alone in your views, and I appreciate your sharing them.
Hello Jessy,
a great post founded on your observation skill as a woman. One of the most amazing things I appreciate the most in woman is their way to see and contribute to our world differently from men. Woman are great in sensitivity and in remarking things that escape us, men, mostly. And even with this mindset in me, I never made the observations about the universe of quotes about leadership you made . Thank you.
So this is my gift back to you : it is the interview (in English) of Katrine Marçal who wrote recently a book about the masculinity of today’s Economics. Go to 11:37 in the video http://www.canvas.be/video/de-afspraak/najaar-2015/dinsdag-20-oktober. The video is virusfree.
Bye
Thank you, Michel. I enjoyed the video of Katrine Marcal. It reminded me of the work of Halla Tomasdotter, co-founder of Audur Capital financial services, who helped Iceland recover from the 2008 economic crisis by applying what she calls “5 traditionally feminine values” to financial services. My return gift is a link to her TED Talk: http://www.ted.com/talks/halla_tomasdottir?language=en (in English, but with subtitles in Dutch, German, and other languages.
From your post: “It makes me think we’re just not paying attention.” In my thinking, that’s exactly what IS happening and in another way SHOULD be happening but isn’t!!! It all comes down to the criteria we utilize when making any CHOICE!!! We have to realize that criteria such as gender might be a legitimate criterion but will never be ALWAYS a legitimate criterion; indeed, ‘NO CRITERION’ will always be legitimate or appropriate…
My careers are both strongly linked with engineering. There’s much from my careers that I bring to other important facets of my life (just as there are other points of view – leadership and this blog for example – that I consider for engineering…). Historically for sure and currently sadly also, there are far fewer women in engineering than men. Sadly (again), it’s, I believe, for two reasons: too many females don’t find many females in engineering – but they are there for sure; and too many males don’t see the value the gender diversity brings to efforts.
Bottom line: Everyone must make choices with the appropriate criteria involved AND we all must value the importance of diversity to our efforts…
I agree that using gender as the sole criteria when making a choice takes us down a slippery slope. And I appreciate your Both/And approach.
The problem is, in this case, the database is skewed and therefore one’s choices are limited.
This is a curious and interesting post, Jesse. I hesitate to write wondering if I’ll be judged as, well, a man. If I were to put together a list of leadership quotes by performing an internet search, I would be looking at the content and worthiness of the quote, not whether it was by a man or a woman. My list would no doubt be reflective of the database of possible quotes.
I’m wondering how you selected your quotes. Did you look primarily for women to quote? Was that part of your criteria? It’s ok if it was, but then, was it truly delivering what the title promised? (Subjective, I know.)
What if we looked at these lists and asked what races are represented? What nationality? What about Democrats VS Republicans? Etc.
Women have not received the honor they deserve as leaders. The scarcity of female CEOs reveals that. Also, we as a country have not elected a female President, yet. Regarding the latter, my vote will go to whom I believe will be the best leader for the country regardless of whether it’s a man or a woman.
I think no one noticed the bias of your list because it didn’t matter to them. They were reading to enjoy the quotes period. They were not evaluating male vs female.
Your comment about James Dean not being a leadership expert raised the question, Did he claim to be? Did the list on which he was quoted say those quoted were leadership experts? Or, did he happen to say something that resonated on the subject of leadership. I am a believer that everyone is capable of being a leader, since leadership is influence. Even James Dean, although maybe not an “expert”, no doubt influenced (led) others. What qualifies one to be labeled an “expert” anyway?
Leadership is one of those things that we recognize when we see it and when we don’t. I’m willing to follow a good leader. I don’t care whether it’s a man or a woman.
You wrote, “Each time you create a grossly unbalanced list or use several quotes that do not accurately represent reality, you perpetuate the view that leadership belongs to the realm of men.” Is that what you did by using quotes mainly from women? I would like to think you did not.
I want to support Women for their valuable contribution to the leadership arena, and I hope to see their ranks swell. We need them.
Again, thanks for the interesting post. Made me think.
Hi Dan,
I think the issue is exactly as you describe – any list would “no doubt be reflective of the database of possible quotes.” And the problem is the database here is skewed.
My intention with the list I created was to put some new quotes into the system and help rebalance the database a bit. I think it did help because I see some of these quotes popping up more now.
I appreciate your courage to step forward and share your thoughts. We grow and learn from our conversations.
Thanks for your reply. We are both on a mission to improve the field of Leadership. I appreciate what you do.
Another thought: Unconscious bias or prejudice may be the most difficult of all to deal with, whether race, gender, class, ethnicity, sexual orientation, ability, religion, age, or socio-economic status. My hunch is that it’s definitely a gender bias and it’s time to get over it as we’ve tried to do with equal work equal pay and a whole host of other things. When it’s a conscious and intentional preference of one over the other, that’s inexcusable or else just plain ignorance of the facts. Thanks again for your contributions!
Indeed. And the place to start with unconsciousness is to become conscious. It’s the first step in change.
I appreciate your concern and recognition that although this might seem like a small thing, it impacts our children’s perceptions in a subtle but significant way.
It’s the subtle, unconscious biases that really inform the messages we send and receive. Thanks for pointing this out in your field.
Jesse,
Thanks for raising this issue. Unconscious biases are the most challenging to examine, because we don’t know we have them! Whenever I write a list similar to the one in this post, I first look for worthiness of content. Many of the commenters here have suggested that be the only criteria. In other words, does the person’s information/idea “merit” inclusion? That’s all well and good – except, if the sample population excludes an entire subset that is not even featured, how can the they make the “list?”
So, there needs to be a second level of sorting, one that asks, “Who am I missing?” or “Is there an imbalance to this list?” It’s not scientific, but I have schooled my brain to think in that way.
Jennifer, A second level of criteria? Really. If the article is promising a list of the best leadership quotes, must it include a certain percentage of male vs female contributors? Why? Better to qualify the article then and restate the purpose to something like “Best leadership quotes from an equal sampling of male vs female contributors.”
Why must there be a “second level of sorting” to ask “Who am I missing?” I just don’t see the logic in that. It’s about the quote, not the person speaking (at least, in this example.)
Look, I’m all for women being given a fair shake, equal pay, open access to leadership positions, and all things to which any man is qualified. But to hallucinate bias where none exists isn’t helpful to women’s causes.
I publish a “Best of…” Blog post once a month in an online Social Media Community. Both men and women are allowed to submit posts. The posts are accepted based on the merit of their content. I could care less whether it was written by a man or a women. And, should the end result be 8 posts by men and 2 posts by women, I wouldn’t change the list just because it was 80% male dominated. It just turned out that way that month. No lurking bias, just reality.
As I wrote earlier, I fully support women in business and women in Leadership. God knows, we need more great leaders of all genders.
Dan,
If the best of list is taken primarily from a specific subset of readers, how can it claim to be a broader best of list?
It’s ok to have best of subset lists, but the population represented should be explicit- ie. best male authored leadership quotes- otherwise it is somewhat misleading, is it not?
Has anyone observed any differences in the messages from female vs males about leadership?-That would be an interesting follow question to explore
Best
Lori
Judging from the number of comments, your article spiked a response in many. Now that we know, the task for all of us in leadership is to DO something. To know and not to do is NOT to know. Sure raised my awareness.
Very inspiring Jesse. I find it interesting that it is not the only the leadership discipline that is affected by this phenomena. To realize the extent of this issue, one need only research the history of female scientists, authors, artists, and musicians that felt the need to assume a male pen name in order to get their work taken seriously. The work of female scientists is often missing in general–not because there is no profound accomplishment there, but because her contribution isn’t referenced in the timeline, even if it were profound. Ironically, Mary Ann Evans wrote “Silly Novels by Lady Novelists,” in order to criticize the quality of work that the female gender was dispensing in her day–romance novels that were traditional, expected, and anemic, not inspiring anyone demonstrable change, under the pen name of George Eliot. Even acting as a faithful sister, she had to disguise herself as a man! Thank you for altering my reticular activation! I will be more conscious in the future to make sure my research and quotes and bibliographies represent a balanced representation of reality.
Thanks so much for sharing this information, Geri. Very interesting. And we don’t have to go back too far in history – J.K. Rowling comes instantly to mind. Glad to have sparked your reticular activation system.
Hi Jesse,
As is the case with many of the respondents, I didn’t pay much attention to gender, but to the quality of the idea. However, having said that, we shouldn’t consider this to be evidence of a lack of bias for why women – be they business/no-profit/community leaders, philosophers, writers, actresses, poets, etc – are not appearing in larger numbers in these types of inspiring leadership quotes.
To be clear, the challenge we face as humans is to recognize that biases are not always intentional nor are they always done with malicious intent. In many cases, our biases are simply the product of how our brain has processed information over years and then creates these shortcuts to help us figure out the world.
For example, research done by Amy Cuddy, Susan Fiske, and Peter Glick found that in today’s workplaces, working mothers are perceived to be warm, but that warmth also translates into their being viewed as being less competent. Conversely, working fathers are seen to not only be more warm than single men, but they don’t lose their perception of competence just because they’re now a father.
Clearly, what’s happening here is that men are benefiting from parenthood in terms of their ability to demonstrate warmth, while women are suffering from it because it impacts their perceived competence (to wit, notice how “having it all” refers more to working mothers than working fathers. Clearly, what’s at the heart of that notion of “having it all” is being seen as both warm and competent).
And it’s not just women affected by these unconscious bias mechanisms. In another study done by Marianne Bertrand and Sendhil Mullainathan, they sent over 1000 fake resumes for real job ads posted in Boston and Chicago where some of these fake applicants had solid qualifications while others were sorely lacking.
The researchers then created names for these candidates that implied the person was either Caucasian or African-American. The goal here was to see if people would unconsciously bias against supposed African-American candidates even if they were better qualified. What they found was that candidates with Caucasian-sounding names got 1 call for every 10 resumes sent compared to 1 call for every 15 resumes from candidates with African-American sounding names, even though they had the same experience.
Now the easy thing is to claim intentional discrimination, but studies have shown that it’s not intentional, it’s just reflecting our unconscious bias that all of us use because our brain uses these shortcuts to simplify how much cognitive load it has to process for us to get through our day.
So what does this all mean? Well, it means that while many of us are saying we’re gender-neutral in our perception, the truth is that we might still be employing subconscious biases that favour male examples (and I would take it one step further to say “white male” examples – Nelson Mandela, Martin Luther King, Jr, and Gandhi tend to be the only popular non-white examples mostly because they’re the most well known, even though some of the “white male” examples used are fairly obscure).
And ironically, we’re doing this for the very reason we state at the beginning of our comment to your piece for why we didn’t say anything in the first place – we just weren’t paying attention to the gender of the speaker.
Perhaps we need to recognize that paying attention is not necessarily a bad thing if the goal here is to assess what unconscious biases we might be employing which might be limiting the talent/thought leader pool from which we seek inspiration and illumination.
After all, change can only really occur when we look past our own current view to increase our awareness of what’s really around us.
Just one science guy’s two nickels (we got rid of pennies here in Canada a few years ago so I don’t have any to share).
Thank you for your comprehensive and cogent thoughts, Tanveer. The studies you quote add compelling evidence. I appreciate your respectful approach to a subject that is difficult to discuss, and your emphasis that lack of awareness is not intentional. Your “two nickels” are greatly appreciated!
Dear Tanveer,
This is a great post. Not only because of the research mentioned proving how a bias is “naturally” constructed, but also because of your conclusion :”.. change can only really occur when we look past our own current view to increase our awareness of what’s really around us.”
Most of the time this is not a solo trip: we need the reflection of one or more third persons (here Jesse, and the researchers you mention), to be and stay curious (i.e. accepting that one doesn’t know everything), and that you are open to any surprise. And so we are where back at the start of our discussion here: the essence of leadership 🙂
Hi Jesse,
I enjoy reading quote lists. However, I have never stopped to consider how the lists were created. In fact, I never even considered the intent and demographics of the person who compiled them.
My first reaction to your post was to explain that I was more concerned for the ideas being expressed rather than the identity, gender, nationality, religion, political ideology etc. of the person expressing the idea. I even came up with some arguments about how most of the ideas being expressed were timeless and were older concepts being rephrased and made new by the person being quoted, with the original author (regardless of their personal demographics) lost in the depths of human history.
Upon further self-reflection, I realized I was embarrassed that I had never been consciously aware or curious of how the information I was put together or their sources. The point you are making by showing a gender bias this instance is to question everything that could influence our thoughts.
Thank you for broadening my awareness.
P.S. When I find a quote that inspires me, I research the speaker and the context in which it they used it. I like to understand the character of the speaker and their circumstances. It makes for some good reading.
So helpful to see how your thinking unfolded as you recognized your defensiveness, moved past it, and saw how it broadened your awareness. Thanks so much for sharing it, Matthew!
Jesse, I love quotes and am not always conscious of why I choose one over another. But I will say that I did actually notice your quotes were slanted in this direction. It would seem quite odd to point that out. Similarly, people of various backgrounds of any type often tend to have more quotes representing that background. It would seem strange – or rude – to call that out?
Your post does call into question our normal perceptions and biases. Diversity is so crucial for this very reason. We will pick up on things, trends, how something will be received differently and more appropriately with a broad group of people. A diverse team gets better results because we fill in each other’s blind spots.
Thank you for the thought provoking article – as always!
Hi Skip, Great to have you weigh in! I think the issue is not whether one is conscious about why they choose a particular quote (often our choices are simply intuitive), but whether they are aware that the database (list) they are choosing from is skewed and therefore their choices are limited. Glad to hear that you do notice. Simply noticing is a powerful step.
Hmmmm. Wonderful and diverse set of responses Jesse. Both male and female. As I read your article I was left looking inward not outwards. How do I contribute to perpetuating biases anywhere in my life What “closed loop” cycles such as male leadership quotes being prevalent leads to male leadership quotes being prevalent? I especially appreciate Tanveer’s comment that includes the research. I’ve been sitting back and reflecting after I read what you wrote. The more impulsive I tend to be in situations like this the more defensive I really am under the surface. So sit back and take in what you are saying and suggesting.
People in this string are having different interpretations of the same data….and regardless of the differences in in the interpretation, the data is compelling. There are A LOT more male leadership quotes than female. A lot more white leadership quotes than people of color. The leadership quotes you include above are another example of our collective biases.
While I do believe there is a “both / and” polarity dynamic here — if we over-focus on male quotes to the relative exclusion of female quotes we will miss out on some valuable counsel. If we over-focus on female quotes to the exclusion of male’s we are equally lacking.
I’m opening up this conversation beyond leadership quotes because I believe the issue is bigger than leadership quotes. You have shined a light on one particular corner of what for most of us, is an unintentional and unknown bias. It’s important to see what previously had been unseen. What we do with these newfound views are up to each of us.
Thanks Jesse.
I especially appreciate your point that when a polarity is out of balance, everyone in the system suffers. When those who are supposedly benefitting begin to see that they actually are not benefitting, this becomes everyone’s issue, not just a women’s issue. Thanks for adding your good thoughts, Jake
Thank you, Jesse, for this provocative uncovering of unconscious bias.
Hi Jesse,
When I read this post, I knew two things would happen. Men would step up and start saying how they don’t see gender they just look for the quality of the quote. Second, somebody would accuse you of doing the same thing that you’re complaining about by creating a database weighted towards women (congratulations Dan Forbes).
Two facts create this defensivness: that leadership has historically been the domain of men because of forced inequality, and in this day in age nobody wants to appear sexist. That’s all fine and well, but totally misses the point of your post.
Jennifer Miller nails it. She seems to have a research background, because she actively works to adjust for sample bias. Doing doctoral level research gives me a pretty good understanding of sample bias, trust me on this one.
It’s not enough to behave as the men here are saying, especially with Mr Forbes tenacity. The point is to reduce bias (whether gender, racial, age, or cultural), we must actively work to improve our sampling. We must take affirmative actions to improve diversity. You are showing us one way in which we can do this in regards to leadership and gender. Bravo, way to lean in.
Gentlmen, suck it up; accept the criticism and change your behavior. Follow Jake Jacob’s example, he’s being a mensch. Otherwise you are actively defending and reifying the institutional bias that you say you’re against because you’re “only looking at the quality of content.” I call that a red herring.
Wise observations that only a man could make. Thank you for speaking up, Jim!