Time Who's Talking: Count and Mobilize with the GA Tally App to Ensure a Diversity of Voices at Every Table

Inspired by GenderAvenger, Cathy Deng created the Are Men Talking Too Much website, which had a simple timer that allowed you to record how much time “a dude” spent talking vs “not a dude”. With Cathy’s help in 2017, we turned her inspiration into the Time Who’s Talking feature of the GA Tally app.

We initially thought that it would be used to record the amount of time men and women spoke on panels during conferences, on tv news, and maybe even at the dinner table. By 2018, though, we began to see a new and potentially really important use case, tracking meetings in the workplace, and more recently we enhanced inclusion in this feature by adding the opportunity to time voices of women of color. Over the last four years, the Time Who’s Talking feature of the GA Tally has proven to be popular and is frequently used by GA supporters.

Counting who’s there is only half the battle when it comes to elevating women’s voices in the public dialog, though. When women are present, they often can’t get a word in! A February Washington Post article, “Who won’t shut up in meetings? Men say it’s women. It’s not.”, revealed that it doesn’t matter if it’s a board meeting or a Supreme Court hearing, men are doing most of the talking. MOST. OF. THE. TALKING. In fact, they’re not just doing most of the talking, they’re actively engaged in silencing the women who do have the courage to speak up.

We’re not sure why men are interrupting, but we need men to get with the program. Recently, a community member tagged us in a conversation on Twitter about men and their feedback on hearing women’s voices in meetings and training sessions. The gist of the conversation? Men think that the tones of women’s voices are “annoying”. How rude.

Increasingly, we are receiving anonymous tallies clearly created during internal business meetings. Some tallies are being generated on a weekly basis with the same titles, indicating that a regularly scheduled leadership meeting is likely being monitored. One major philanthropic organization executive told us that by using the Time Who’s Talking feature over a three-week period, she was able to demonstrate the need to rethink the organization’s “meeting culture” to the top leadership, and changes ensued.

With the rethinking of our workplace habits, it seems time to promote the use of the GA Tally’s Time Who’s Talking feature so we can better our work environments wherever they might be, whether on screen or in person. It’s simple to use, although it does take some concentration, so you might want to figure out who would be best to do the tallying in any meeting.

Now it’s your turn to Time Who’s Talking!

Step 1: Download the GA Tally app.

Step 2: Select “Time Who’s Talking”.

Step 3: Decide if you want to…

• Use our timer: Just press the button when a person in one of our three categories speaks

OR

• Enter the time: You can keep time somewhere else and add that information manually into the app 😅

Step 4: Identify who’s talking.

We have three categories to determine who’s taking up airtime in meetings, at events, and at conferences. These categories are:

• “a dude” = identifies as a male from any racial demographic

• “not a dude (white)” = identifies as not a male and is white

• “not a dude (of color)” = identifies as not a male and is a person of color

Step 5: Submit and share your data with us at @GenderAvenger.

WE LOVE SEEING YOUR TALLIES! Once you’re all done, you’ll get something cool like this to share as evidence of what you’re seeing and hearing…

Counting voices is at the heart of what we do. Sometimes we get fooled. You may look around and say to yourself, “Hey, there are women here! There are non-binary folks here! That’s great.” But are these women and non-binary individuals sharing their knowledge? Were they able to speak as much as the men? Were they interrupted?

We rely on you, our community, to help us highlight the atrocities (and the victories) present across industries, media and entertainment, and politics. Counting is only part of the solution. We need each of you to mobilize around this community-driven data effort to push for change in your industries. Even when there is gender parity, it’s not enough to put women and non-binary folks in the room, at the table, or into the action if what we’re hearing are still mostly men’s voices.

We need to adjust the way we conduct meetings, we need to facilitate spaces that allow women and non-binary folks the time and space to speak, and we need to provide training so that men see other voices and contributions as vital and important parts of ensuring that events, and whole industries, are successful!