In this episode of the Proteus Leader Show, host Erika Andersen interviews Donna Rubin, founder of the Speaking While Female Speech Bank and author of the anthology Speaking While Female. Rubin explains how she discovered, through a survey of 230 English-language speech anthologies, that women’s speeches are vastly under‑represented in historical records, leading to a skewed public narrative. She argues that this omission deprives young women of role models and gives society a lopsided view of history. The conversation explores the tangible negative outcomes of silencing women—limited confidence, harsher criticism, and fewer leadership opportunities—while drawing parallels to other fields where male‑centric data produce biased understandings. Rubin outlines concrete actions leaders and organizations can take: allocate resources to train and encourage women’s speaking skills, create pipelines for women to become thought leaders, and foster allyship by having men actively make space for diverse voices. She also highlights the growing global community supporting the project and the importance of digital platforms for spreading the message. The episode ends with calls to action for listeners to support both the Speech Bank and Proteus’s leadership programs.
Chapters
You're listening to the Proteus Leader Show with Erika Andersen, where you'll get practical tools and insights for leading and managing and staying ready for the future. Erika is the founding partner of Proteus, a firm that focuses uniquely on leader readiness. A nationally known executive coach and bestselling author, you may already know her as one of the most popular leadership bloggers on Forbes.com. Ready for something you can use today? Here's Erika.
Hello, everyone, and welcome back to the Proteus Leader Show. My guest today is Donna Rubin, founder and curator of the Speaking While Female Speech Bank, and author of Speaking While Female, an anthology of speeches by women throughout US history that helped shape the nation. Donna is a consultant and speaker committed to women's speech, voice and thought leadership. Her consultancy is Speech Studio. She helps organizations develop their diverse talent and underrepresented voices. So welcome to the show, Donna.
Thank you. Thank you. Happy Women's History Month. And I'm happy to be here.
Happy Women's History Month. It won't, it won't be Women's History Month by the time our listeners are listening to this. But we can just remember Women's History Month all year. I just, I love what you're doing, Donna. Your work, uh, as you know, first came to my attention through LinkedIn, where you regularly post brief, compelling intros to speeches in your Speaking While Female Speech Bank. And I immediately wanted to let our listeners know about the important work that you're doing.
Thank you. I, I really enjoy the community on LinkedIn. You know, it's, for the most part, it's very civil conversation. And I have a community that educates me. They correct me when I make They chime in, extend the conversation. So it's my favorite avenue for sharing knowledge and learning.
Yes, I found it wonderful. So, so, I mean, wonderful in many regards, but particularly in regards to you. So I'd love to just kind of dive in and ask you the first question, which is, what are you hoping to achieve in creating the Speaking While Female speech bank and book? What, what, what, what would be your desired outcomes for this?
My desired outcome is to shift our understanding of who spoke in history. Now, admittedly, it's very hard to measure that. I don't think there's any objective way to have a measuring stick to tell that we've moved from one place to another. But when I started this project about 4 or 5 years ago, I, um, I did a survey, a rather in-depth survey of speech anthologies. I collected 230 speech anthologies in the English language, and I just looked inside the table of contents to see how many were by men and how many were by women. And what I found showed me that the way we construct our ideas of rhetoric and of the spoken word has been almost entirely a male endeavor. There's almost no recognition that women spoke. So I want to change that. And by, by the time I kick off this mortal shuffle, I'd like for young women and girls to grow up knowing that they have an accessible past of women speakers and an inspirational and motivational past so that they too can use their voices and speak up.
Oh, that's wonderful. I love that. Just shifting that current of history to incorporate women. And women speaking and women's thoughts. That's great. So, so what negative outcomes do you see, have you seen, and do you see from ignoring and dismissing women's contributions to public speech?
Well, the negative outcomes, in fact, are tangible and discernible. We know that overwhelmingly, women have a harder time speaking in our culture.
Hmm.
And in many, if not most parts of the world, it is harder for women to speak up. And it's— there are multiple reasons for that. Among them is that women don't have the opportunity to speak up. Women aren't in positions of institutional leadership as much as men in many, many places. But also it's harder for women to have the confidence to speak up. In aggregate, more men speak up in public than women do, and that goes for everything from conferences and public events to city hall and school board meetings. Women have a harder time using their voices. We also know that it's not a level playing field. When women speak up, they get criticized more than men do. Their voices, their whether their voice is too high or too low, whether they are. shrill, whether they have the right tone. It's just harder for women. It's also harder for women because they disproportionately bear the burden of caregiving in our society. So until we have a more equal playing field, it's— we won't have equality of public voice. But one of the main ways that we get more women's voices into the conversation, the public conversation, is by giving them role models and showing them that others have done it before them. So that's— so the negative outcome is that we don't have enough women's voices in the world. And I believe that's partly due to the fact that we don't have role models.
Yeah. Let's wander down that path just a little farther. So you are making now and have made a compelling case that women don't speak up as much and that the public record doesn't have as many women, you know, by, you know, huge margin as men. How do you think that negatively impacts us to not have as many women's voices in the conversation?
When we don't know that women have spoken out in history, as I, as I mentioned, we don't have role models. So that's a negative impact. When we don't have role models, when we don't see tangible examples of women having done that, then we can't gain inspiration from the past. But in another sense, when women's voices aren't included in the historical narrative, then we all lose out because we get a very lopsided view of history.
Yeah. Yes. It's kind of analogous to how for years when doctors experimented with new drugs, they only experimented on men, just kind of somehow assuming that either women didn't matter or that they were going to be affected the same way. And so we we get this lopsided medical understanding. And I think you're saying that writ large, we get a lopsided understanding of ourselves as humans, of history, if women's voices aren't sufficiently represented.
It's lopsided. And then just to go a step further, it's wrong. It's a mistelling of American history if we don't include the agency of women who stepped up and spoke out.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, that makes a lot of sense. So then what— I always promise our listeners that this will be very practical. So what can our listeners as leaders, many of whom are leaders or team members in their organizations, what can they do themselves to address this issue where they live and work?
Well, there's a couple of issues. One issue is to correct the historic record, but the other issue is to get more women's voices into the, into the world, and including for organizations, companies, for firms. There's a couple of things that I feel really strongly about. One is encourage your organization to support women's voices and to support training for women's voices. I believe that every organization should devote some resources to helping a new cohort of women who've just come in the door and teach them the skills of speaking out, the skills of self-advocacy, the skills of thought leadership. And then as women go up the pipeline, teach them the skills of putting their expertise into the world so that when you have a cohort of women who are being considered for executive positions, for managerial positions, they've done this. They've known how to lead meetings. They've known how to go to conferences and become brand ambassadors and put their recognized their expertise into the world and become recognized experts. So train your women, encourage your women, and by extension, other underrepresented voices. Make sure that that's a part of your corporate commitment, the commitment the company or your organization makes to its, its community.
Yeah, that's great. And what, what can or should organizations do to help men, particularly white men, see that this is beneficial to everybody? What are the steps that organizations can take in your experience?
Well, first of all, I should clarify that not every white man is a great speaker, comfortable speaking. They need help too. They need help too. So everybody needs encouragement and experience to be a better speaker. But what can men do to be better allies? They can support those policies. They can learn to not pontificate and make space for other people's voices in the, in the, in community spaces, in organizational spaces. And when women do put their voices into the world, when women do share their expertise, they can support That knowledge and make sure that other people hear about it.
That's great. That's great. Oh, thank you so much, Donna. I love that you're setting the record straight in this way. It's a very powerful thing that you're doing. And listeners, if you'd like to find out more about Donna's work or buy her book, you can just go to speakingwhilefemale.co. See ya. So thank you so much, Donna. This has been great. Great little—
Thank you. It's a real pleasure to talk to you. You know, one of the main— one of the chief joys of this project has been recognizing that it is resonating all over the country and all over the world. I have allies and people who reach out to me from very far afield, and that in this day and age, it really feels good to know that we are connected and that the message is traveling far and wide. So I value the internet for that, and I of course value our ability to have— to create podcasts and be on podcasts and to have Zoom gatherings so that we can find our tribe and find people who are kindred spirits and think like us and can share the message.
Yes, yes, completely agree. Again, thank you so much. And, um, listeners, if you'd like to find out more about how Proteus supports leaders to be generous and courageous in lifting up all voices in their organizations, you can go to proteusleader.com Click on Topics and choose Accepted Leader. So thank you for listening, and until next time, here's to creating the life you truly want.
We hope you're feeling better equipped to create the career, the business, and the life you want. For more insights and tools for leadership and management, join us at proudestleader.com. Have an excellent day, and thanks for listening.
