女性CEO改变职场谈论女性的方式(上)

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

这里是科学美国人——60秒科学系列，我是凯伦·霍普金。

Think of a top executive at a powerhouse company.

想象一家实力雄厚的公司的高管。

You’re no doubt imagining someone who’s confident and clever, decisive and determined.

毫无疑问，你想象中的是一位自信、聪明、果断、坚定的人。

And, though it pains me to say it, you’re probably picturing a man.

虽然说出来让我很痛苦，但你想象的可能是一个男人。

The sad thing is, you wouldn’t be too far off the mark.

可悲的是，你猜的不会差太远。

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

尽管标准普尔公司的女性占总人口的50%，但首席执行官中只有7%是女性。

That’s Asher Lawson, a graduate student at Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business.

这位是杜克大学福库商学院的研究生亚瑟·劳森。

He says that one way to even the playing field might be to change the way we think about and talk about leadership.

他说，实现公平竞争的一种方式可能是改变我们思考和谈论领导力的方式。

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.

他和他的同事们发现，如果公司的首席执行官是女性，那么组织更有可能使用通常与成就相关的词汇来描述女性。

Their findings appear in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

他们的研究结果发表在《美国国家科学院院刊》上。

Gender inequality has been deemed the “greatest human rights challenge of our time” by the United Nations.

性别不平等被联合国视为“我们这个时代最大的人权挑战”。

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.

在我们的研究中，我们特别感兴趣的是一些使性别不平等长期存在的因素，以及那些性别刻板印象引发的后果。

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.

为了找到这些刻板印象的根源，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汇。

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.

我们对语言很感兴趣，因为语言让我们深入了解人们是如何看待女性的，而不需要依靠他们自己作报告。

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

现在，直接询问公司他们对女性的看法可能会导致一些奇特的猜测。

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.

所以，如果你问一些机构，他们是否认为性别平等，或者他们是否对公平感兴趣，因为他们会考虑到社会的认可性，他们几乎都会回答是。