When AI appears female, it helps women speak up at work

For all the talk over the years about meetings being reduced in number, they remain the bedrock in terms of how organizations get things done. Indeed, executives are estimated to spend over 20 hours a week in meetings.

Making meetings as effective as possible has, therefore, become increasingly important in recent years. An obvious factor is ensuring that all participants feel emboldened to contribute. Over the years, it has been well established that status plays a major role in whether people contribute to meetings or not, with higher-status individuals far more likely to speak up.

Gender matters

Interestingly, however, it also transpires that gender plays a role too. Research from Brigham Young University found that women tend to contribute just 25% of the conversation during a typical meeting.

Interestingly, however, they found that women are more likely to speak up when there are more women in the meeting, and those meetings produce decisions that are made by majority rule.

Women report that they find it difficult, if not impossible, to speak up, no matter how hard they try. As a result, they feel ignored or disregarded. This issue is worsened by gender stereotypes and biases. Many men unconsciously hold stereotypes that lead them to belittle women’s contributions.

Beyond this predisposition, men are often uncomfortable interacting with women and generally find that men's ideas, perspectives, and experiences align more closely with their own. Furthermore, many men find engaging seriously with women stressful because it can lead to conflict, disagreement, and unpleasantness.

Boosting participation

If the Brigham paper outlined ways to increase female participation, a recent study from Cornell University suggests that introducing an AI-powered "virtual teammate" can achieve a similar boost.

The study found that when a virtual teammate, especially with a female voice, was introduced into the mix, the dynamics of gender-imbalanced teams were significantly affected, with women more inclined to speak up than they would before.

The findings mirror those from the Brigham Young research in that greater representation of minorities encourages greater participation. What makes this second study so interesting, however, is that there have been longstanding challenges in terms of getting minorities into leadership roles, which can diminish the effectiveness of those already in them.

Virtual allies

The researchers tested how virtual teammates can affect us at work by running an experiment involving nearly 200 employees who were randomly assigned to groups of three to work on a range of different tasks.

Each team had either one man or one woman. They also all had a fourth member, who was the virtual teammate. This took the form of a virtual avatar who would help with reading instructions, suggesting ideas, or handling the timekeeping. The avatar was equipped to appear either male or female.

Interestingly, however, the avatar wasn't completely automated, and instead was fed lines that had been generated by ChatGPT. This "Wizard of Oz" style illusion helped to ensure that the responses produced by the avatar were lifelike and useful.

Team performance

The researchers then analyzed each team's performance via the chat logs that documented the conversations they had during the tasks. This allowed the researchers to understand how often people participated and especially how often they produced ideas. In addition, each participant was also asked to rate how they found the experience.

"When we looked at participants' actual behaviors, that's where we started to see differences between men and women and how they were reacting when there was either a female agent or a male agent on the team," the researchers explain.

"One interesting thing about this study is that most participants didn't express a preference for a male- or female-sounding voice," they continue. "This implies that people's social inferences about AI can be influential even when people don't believe they are important."

The results clearly show that when women were in the minority, as is often the case in leadership positions, the presence of a female-sounding AI avatar encouraged them to participate more. What's more, female participants also reported thinking more highly of the female avatar in this scenario, suggesting benefits both for the women and the tech.

"With only a gendered voice, the AI agent can provide a small degree of support to women minority members in a group," the researchers conclude.