On September 13th, the Washington Post published an article on the strategy female staffers use to gain a voice in the oval office, called “amplification.” When one female staffer comes up with an idea, another staffer will repeat that suggestion and give credit to the women who spoke it.
The amplification technique gives credit to the women who spoke it, while also taking away the power of a man who would adopt the idea as his own.
It seems that men, whether known or unbeknownst to themselves, have grown up using and expecting the woman’s voice in the room as a feed for their own voices. An idea bank of unconscious plagiarism.
Amplification also forces the men in the oval office to give credit to the woman speaking.
This powerful strategy is an easy method to adopt in your workplace, by empowering the ideas of other women in your office, and combating the universal issue of women needing to fight harder, longer, and for less pay to be seen as equals in the workforce.
Read the article (The Room where it Happens) for more information about ‘amplification,’ and how Obama’s top aides are now equal in numbers of women to men.
Whether a secretary, nurse, or top aide to the White House Administration, copying the well-spoken ideas of a female colleague and crediting her to them is a method to point out female contributions, and offset the power imbalance in ideas shared, or copied, by men.
What a fresh, female way of fighting that glass ceiling.