a feminist collective denounces “with humor” sexism in interviews with business leaders

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What if we asked the same sexist questions of male business leaders as those frequently asked of female leaders? A feminist collective is launching the #SiJetaisElles campaign to denounce gendered interviews. In a video, several bosses answered questions generally asked of women in positions of responsibility.

“We are all unfortunately extremely biased”explains, Thursday, March 24, on franceinfo Tatiana Jama, entrepreneur, co-founder of the Sista collective to reduce inequalities in funding between female and male entrepreneurs.

franceinfo: Did you have a good laugh while making this campaign?

Tatiana Jama: If you knew, it was wonderful! And we still laugh about it. What’s pretty cool about this video and this campaign is that it’s a universal experience. In fact, it makes everyone uncomfortable whether it’s men or women. I think that’s why it works.

Is it about deconstructing through humour?

Yes exactly. The idea is to tell ourselves that collectively, we have a certain number of biases. Moreover, journalists are well aware of this. It is one of the circles that is most aware of its biases. The idea is not to point fingers at all. The idea is fair to say that from a systemic point of view, we are all unfortunately extremely biased. You have to be aware of a bias and act on it.

Have business leaders become aware of these biases?

That was the idea. We did a study with the Keywords agency to actually study a certain number of articles and identify the words that come up the most.

When we analyze the press, we realize that action verbs are intended for men. The men decide, and then the women will think or try.

Tatiana Jama

at franceinfo

It is extremely subtle. It’s not obvious misogyny. And since it’s all subtle, no one really realizes it. That’s why our guests are so taken aback. They weren’t aware of it and I don’t think most people realize it.

The impostor question grabbed one of your business leaders in the video. Is the theme of legitimacy reserved for women?

Of course, there is ultimately a kind of inequality marketing that makes the impostor syndrome come up time and time again in all the interviews with women, when it’s not really the subject when you ask them about their skills. Throughout the campaign and the Keywords study, there are a lot of lessons that are interesting, especially around eternal youth. It’s something that struck me, each time, the word young woman comes up systematically when we’re not talking about a young man. Although we are the same age. We often talk about my children. My husband has the same, we never talk to him about it.

Will we be able to change mentalities through humor?

I am convinced of it. The two keys are, first the data. From the moment we put figures on inequalities, there are more feelings, but factual inequalities that are shown. That’s what we did at the very beginning by saying that only 2% of women had been funded. 2% is nothing and it marks. The second thing is humor because I think we are in an extremely complicated world, which is going badly. By taking these subjects with humor, we think we can bring them out in the right way.


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