Georgia Dallas, Jane Sekibo, Toluwa Agboola, Grace Oliver – Language Speeches

No-one would ever accuse me of lacking confidence in the rightness of my opinion.

This was a repeated theme in my school reports – Mr Tuck, in particular, felt I could do with “listening a little more than speaking” – it continued to be a feature of my time at university – where I seemed to feel that what our seminar groups really needed was to hear from me a little more – and I’m certain my blithe belief in my own omnipotence has smoothed my path through a variety of job interviews.

Although, not for this job, obviously . . .

It was fascinating, therefore, to read the recent conclusions of the Harvard Business Review that, because we ‘commonly misinterpret displays of confidence as a sign of competence, we are fooled into believing that men are better leaders than women’ (you can read the rest of this sobering report – if you are male, that is! – here).

There are obviously two key ideas to reflect upon here. Firstly, I probably need to keep a touch quieter in meetings. Secondly and, more importantly, a crucial idea for our school to focus upon, is why do women not display the type of confidence which ‘fools’ us into thinking they are competent?

We know we live in a society that does not always respect, nor reward, acts of confidence in women. Jennifer Coates, in her Women, Men and Language found that we, instinctively, have different expectations for what is ‘appropriate’ behaviour for men and women. Whilst I have happily spent my life holding forth on my ‘views’ to any audience that will stay still long enough – comfortable that the world will value whatever comes from my mouth – women that might do the same are received with far harsher judgements. John Pfeiffer in Girl Talk – Boy Talk found that in every social setting men ‘control and dominate conversation’, with his most interesting finding being how normal ‘interrupting’ was for males: not only do we like to speak, but we’re perfectly happy shutting down any woman who actually attempts to articulating a position. Zimmerman and West researched this further in their Language and Sex: Difference and Dominance, discovering that 95% of interruptions carried out in the conversation, were carried out by men.

Which is why I think the environment we create here at Queenswood is so important.

I look around at our girls, and particularly our Sixth Form girls, and the word to describe them that leaps out to me is not quiet. It is not submissive. It is not accepting.

It is confident.

Daniella Rocca (voice) – For Good (Schwarz)

If the wider world truly holds that a man’s word is worth more than a woman’s, then this is very much a life lesson that Queenswood girls have not internalised: it is wholly the norm for our 6th Form girls to follow STEM subjects – with no recognition that perhaps those things are better left for ‘the boys’: they run successful businesses for Young Enterprise; our new Computer Science department is thriving; I regularly speak to girls looking to read Engineering, Physics, Medicine at university; within the Arts, our girls challenge the patriarchal canon of the Dead White Males– not just accept that what they are told is ‘the truth’.

Q girls debate, they discuss, they speak with the confidence of knowing that what they say will be listened to. That their voices matter.

Queenswood – The John Fry Public Speaking Competition 2015 – Aoife Morgan Jones

I was told to keep this blog within 500 words – with characteristic verbosity, I’ve obviously decided that my extra 132 words were too important to cut out. It is my sincerest hope that, at the end of their time at Q, our girls would likewise feel their own voice is too significant to censor.