What is “he-peating”?
You are in a meeting, and it’s your turn to speak. You share an idea with your colleagues, it’s ignored. Until a male colleague says more or less the same thing word for word, and suddenly, everyone thinks it’s a brilliant idea. Many women have experienced this scenario at work. It’s not a new phenomenon, but now we have a word to describe it “he-peating.”
The term was initially coined by US astronomer and Prof Nicole Gugliucci. “My friends coined a word: hepeated. For when a woman suggests an idea, and it’s ignored, but then a guy says the same thing, and everyone loves it,”. And while it is true that anyone can experience he-peating, it is a problem most acutely felt by women in male-dominated sectors and workplaces. “So many folks deny that this happens,” Gugliucci added on Twitter. “And yet so much evidence and research show it happens to women AND black and brown men and women.”
How “he-peating” adversely impacts women
Mansplaining is widely experienced. It’s both irritating and frustrating, but research shows that he-peating isn’t just annoying; it can also have a seriously detrimental impact on women’s career progression. Progression and promotion are based on innovation and forward-thinking, but women who experience ‘he-peating’ at work will struggle to develop in their careers. Individuals identified as pushing the business forward with new ideas are recognised as high value; so being unable to show value in this way can leave women demoralised, undermined and unengaged.
New York Times gender editor Jessica Bennett addressed the idea behind “he-peating” in “Feminist Fight Club,” a book detailing her research on gender-related workplace issues at least twelve months before Gugliuccis tweet went viral. In the book, Bennett says, “I don’t think ‘hepeaters’ even realise they’re doing it. Deeply ingrained bias and years of culture have long taught men to speak up loudly and with authority and the rest of us [women] to listen when they do so,” Bennett says.
To illustrate that point, it's not hard to find numerous examples of men taking credit for women’s work or, at the very least, ignoring their contribution. We all want to be recognised for doing a good job. To earn promotions and moving up in an organisation - doing your homework and making your hard work known can help you get ahead. Yet, giving credit where credit is due is easier said than done, especially when it comes to crediting women.
In 2017, researchers at the University of Delaware found that women get less credit than men at work, specifically when speaking up and being considered for leadership roles. “We find that when men speak up with ideas on how to change their team for the better, they gain the respect of their teammates,” said lead researcher Kyle Emich, adding that over two separate studies, men were perceived to be more knowledgeable when they spoke up.
More vocal men were more likely to be seen as best suited for leadership roles. Crucially, though, the same was not true of women who spoke up. The study suggested that men who spoke up were consistently seen as leaders. For women, speaking up had little effect on whether they would be considered leadership material.
What can we do about “he-peating”
How can we combat this biased thinking in the workplace and ensure women’s ideas are recognised?
Bennett says one way to ensure women’s voices are heard the first time around is to increase the number of women in the room and encourage them to support each other.
Speak up for yourself: don’t be afraid to make it known that you already voiced the idea when a male colleague tries to ‘hepeat’
Write your ideas in an email and send them to your boss; written and time-stamped evidence will show who had the idea first.
Follow up quickly on your ideas to set them in motion.
Mary Ann Steigart, author of “The Authority Gap: Why Women Are Still Taken Less Seriously Than Men, and What We Can Do About it”, says “Men are assumed to be competent until they prove otherwise, and women are assumed to be incompetent until they prove otherwise”.
Research shows that even if women make up 40% of a group, they are half as likely as men to gain approval from it and much more likely to be interrupted.
Steigart has done years of research suggests several ways we can respond in these situations…. “If Evie makes a point at a meeting and nobody takes a blind bit of notice until Peter repeats it ten minutes later and it’s treated like the second coming, we can say to Peter, “Peter, I’m so glad you agree with what Evie said earlier”. If Peter interrupts Rosa, we can say hang “Hang on a minute, I was really interested in what Rosa was just saying there”
It’s not just men who are the problem. Women are biased against other women. We need to be aware of our thoughts, beliefs and attitudes. When you find yourself judging another woman, ask yourself “Would I have thought/said/done that if that person had been a man rather than a woman?”
What can employers do?
Employers need to ensure they are genuinely hiring and promoting on merit. 70% of recruiters will rate a man higher than a woman for achieving the same goals. Women with the same qualifications as men are 30% less likely to be called for a job interview. Research also shows that if you have only one woman on a shortlist, the chances of appointing her are tiny. Adding just one more woman to the shortlist makes the odds of hiring a woman 79 times greater.
Employers need to discern between confidence and competence and actively encourage talented women to apply for promotion. Women are socialised to be less confident and less self-promoting than men. Women are often told by their senior leaders to “be more confident”, but when they are, they’re frequently penalised for it and labelled as “pushy” or aggressive”.
How can women boost their career prospects?
There are other ways to combat credit attribution bias/he-peating—and that is to get ahead of it, for example, by using the “amplification” approach. An article was written in 2016 about the Obama administration when this exact approach was utilised.
When President Obama took office, two-thirds of his top aides were men. The women at the table complained of having to elbow their way into important meetings. And when they got in, their voices were sometimes ignored. So female staffers adopted a meeting strategy they called “amplification”: When a woman made a key point, other women would repeat it, giving credit to its author. This forced the men in the room to recognise the contribution — and denied them the chance to claim the idea as their own.
It’s certainly a strategy that worked for these women, but there’s no denying there is a great deal of emotional and mental labour required of women that men just don’t need to consider. It feels laborious and unfair, but as the article’s author, Emily Crockett writes, “Women have tremendous strength in numbers, but gathering those numbers in the first place takes courage and conscious effort. Maybe one day we won’t need that tool to be treated equally, but that day isn’t today”. And it doesn’t feel like we’re much further ahead in 2024 either.
Gender equality isn’t a battle women can win on their own. We need men to step up and speak, too. We need men to hear our voices and amplify on our behalf. But until they do, we need to keep doing it for ourselves.
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