Social Influence in Meetings: A Gender Perspective

The promise and peril of parallel chat in video meetings for work

“…A similar finding was reflected in the relative frequency of themes in the combined journal and poll verbatims: women were twice as likely as men to report using parallel chat for questions and answers during meetings (16% of women, versus 8% of men; = 3.3998, = 0.00068). This may be because women, particularly younger women, find it difficult to be heard in meetings, which is consistent with research on gender and meeting participation [28].…”

Gender and humor in meetings: A moderation analysis.

“…Regarding workplace perceptions and experiences at large prior work has established gender effects (e.g., Drory & Beaty, 1991; Hitlan et al, 2006; Kiser, 2015; Sweeney & McFarlin, 1997). Yet, gender insights in the field of meeting science are limited (Hemshorn de Sanchez & Meinecke, 2020). Given that meetings are so complex, the mesh of mechanisms and effects in which gender feeds in and in which it is embedded is equally complex.…”

“…The popular press has published a number of articles that explicitly address the different experiences of men and women in business meetings (Chira, 2017; Connley, 2020; Grant, 2021; Green Carmichael, 2018; Gupta, 2020; Heath et al, 2014; Masters, 2021; Merchant, 2021). Yet, in meeting science systematic insights into the role of gender in workplace meetings remain sparse to date (Hemshorn de Sanchez & Meinecke, 2020).…”

“…Qualitative work in sociolinguistics suggests that gender plays a vital role in social processes and, particularly, in those related to communication in the context of workplace meetings (Holmes, 2008). Empirical research in this regard is much more scattered across disciplines and usually does not focus on meeting experiences or meeting processes (Hemshorn de Sanchez & Meinecke, 2020). A major drawback of the limited gender-related research in the context of workplace meetings is that behaviors and perceptions are not distinguished appropriately.…”

“…Such lack of methodological precision is dramatic since behaviors and perceptions of such behaviors can diverge to a large extent (e.g., Lehmann-Willenbrock & Allen, 2018). A second limitation of prior research on workplace meeting processes and outcomes concerns strongly differing methodologies that prevent a concise synthesis of the findings (Hemshorn de Sanchez & Meinecke, 2020). To understand which psychological aspects are relevant for individual meeting experiences, it would be helpful to know how gender, as a strong social cue (Deaux, 1984), influences perceptions of within-meeting processes and their relationships to perceived meeting outcomes.…”