In our journey to create a better world, one of the crucial things we need to do is support powerful women speaking powerfully.

ALL of us.

We have what I call a “cultural voice story” – that women’s voices are less important than men’s. There’s another one I’ve just realized we have – that women have to compete (and compete hard) with each other for the attention of men.

Men can be very dismissive of women’s voices. Another story – we don’t need to pay attention to what women say. I worked with a woman pilot, whose male co-pilots didn’t pay any attention to her voice over their headphones unless she dropped her pitch to sound more like a guy. In her normal speaking voice, they completely tuned her out. It was as if she hadn’t even spoken. When she sounded more like a guy, their brains paid attention.

Voice stories can be insidious, because they are largely UNCONSCIOUS. You don’t even know you have them.

So men, please be aware of these cultural voice stories, and stop buying into them. Notice if you’re tuning women out, and make a choice to tune them back in.

And women, we can be even more critical of other women than the guys are. Men may tune us out, but we often actively tear each other down.

I may have been lucky with women – I’ve been knocked down more often by men than by other women. But I have female friends who have been really savaged by other women.

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