I’m embarrassed to admit this story but it needs to be told…
My friend and I have been working on the launch of our new podcast, The Fire Drill podcast. We plan to talk about early retirement, side hustles, real estate, and all things FIRE.
We both are two twenty-something female financial bloggers and I am a self-proclaimed girl boss and serious feminist. (I think Gwen is a girl boss/feminist too but she is less vocal about calling herself one).
Despite our identities, we made this glaring oversight a few weeks ago that I feel compelled to share.
Here is what happened.
We thought it would be really cool to have a professional sounding intro for our podcast. Typically podcast intros have a welcome greeting with a few key phrases said over music.
It’s very common for the podcast hosts to say the intro themselves but the podcasters I listen to, such as Pat Flynn from the Smart Passive Income Podcast, have professional voice actors say their intros.
In my opinion, a professional intro can make a podcast seem extra legit and really sets the tone for the episode. It’s like a sportscaster or big-time movie person is introducing you and getting everyone fired up for the episode.
We wanted to start our podcast off with a bang, so I decided to take on the task of looking for a voiceover artist on Fiverr.
I found this guy with thousands of five-star reviews who would record a podcast intro for $5. His voice sounded LEGIT and it would be an epic start to the podcast. It would be like the Irish Morgan Freeman from Philadelphia was introducing our podcast and us.
Well as soon as I was about to book this guy, it said he was on vacation for two days. Apparently Fiverr does vacation notifications now? Good for them, everyone deserves a vacation, but I was bummed.
Luckily, this temporary delay made me rethink things.
What was I doing?
This self-proclaimed girl boss was choosing A GUY to represent us in our podcast intro (because that is what I thought financial podcast intros sounded like??)
It honestly never crossed my mind to look for a female voice artist.
I had probably heard so many financial podcasts with male intros that I never even thought to look for a woman.
Money and entrepreneurship podcasters typically had males with big powerful voices introduce them and that is what I unconsciously thought would make our podcast “sound” like it belonged.
WHAT.THE.FLIP.
When my brain cells started firing again, I spent the extra five seconds in the sea of Fiverr male voiceover artists to find a female artist I liked.
24 hours later, we had an epic intro for the FIRE drill podcast.
Funny enough, I sent the raw file to Gwen and she goes, “wow, I wasn’t expecting it to be a lady, but I’m so glad and I love it.”
We need to consciously think of hiring women
In the age of the Google Manifesto (not even going to link to it here because I’m still sore about it), we need to be especially conscious in how we discuss hiring women.
Let’s be clear. It is NOT about lowering the bar to allow more females and minorities through.
It’s about *consciously thinking* about hiring females and minorities when we’re making hiring decisions, because to put it blatantly, we will forget them otherwise.
Qualified amazing people are slipping through the cracks every day, because we are unconsciously looking for the candidate that we see in our heads – the standard male candidate that is the majority today.
When making a hiring decision, we think the male candidates (or voiceover artists in my situation) sound like the person we are looking for, and the other candidates just don’t fit the profile.
I fell into this trap and I’m a serious feminist. Maybe you could too.
Let’s try it.
When thinking about what type of podcasts you expect a female voiceover artist to introduce, what comes to mind?
A few weeks ago, I was unconsciously thinking mommy podcasts, female entrepreneurship podcasts, or relationship podcasts.
I was NOT thinking money or financial podcasts and THIS IS WRONG.
All of my thoughts for what a female voiceover artist would typically introduce had podcast “for females” in it.
Society says: Male voice artists introduce podcasts for everyone. Female voice artists introduce podcasts “for females.”
That is so messed up.
Men, would you be comfortable having a woman introduce you on your hypothetical podcast?
Women, would you be comfortable having a male introduce you?
Why or why not?
I think some of this stems with men being uncomfortable having a female represent them, but women being completely comfortable with having a male represent them.
I’m sure there are many more women who are comfortable with a male introducing them than the reverse.
I heard a famous female director say once that male critics often don’t like her movies because they are forced to put themselves through the eyes of her female characters and they find that uncomfortable.
Women on the other hand are used to seeing the world through the eyes of males in film so it doesn’t make us as uncomfortable.
Not sure how accurate it is but it’s food for thought.
Are we as women more used to putting ourselves in the shoes of the male majority? Are men on the other hand, not as comfortable with the converse because of societal conditioning?
You’re not done once you’ve hired one woman
I went to the Lola Retreat this past weekend (if you don’t know what that is, it’s a financial conference for women that was plain amazing. I live tweeted the whole thing on Twitter if you want to learn more, @millennialboss).
There I met a woman who was asked to be on a podcast where guests have been historically male. She told me that someone was saying to the hosts that they need more female voices and they said, “we already have someone. This woman is coming on.”
Dude, that is one person.
You are not done once you’ve hired one woman or one minority.
We all need to be consciously aware of hiring women and minorities with every single hire we make (or in this example every single podcast guest we bring on).
Men clearly have the advantage in our subconscious, so we need to consciously think of women and minorities every time, so we can help make up for it.
Don’t tell me our podcast is different because we’re two females
If I had a dollar for every time I heard someone say, the FIRE community needs our podcast, because we’re two females, I would be rich.
Isn’t our podcast for everyone? Do we have to change our topics of discussion because we’re female?
Half of me wants to own the whole two females thing and be like yeah, we do need some female voices up in this space.
The other half of me is mad that the male personal finance community members don’t have to have this conversation – or pressure to be the token females.
If our FIRE podcast sounds good to you, get on our email list HERE to be notified of new episodes.
We have a kickass podcast intro that you need to hear! 🙂
Plus, women + money = amazing.
Here is our podcast website: Fire Drill Podcast
What can I do to give opportunities to women?
Three easy things:
- Actively think of women and minorities every time you give an opportunity to someone and question your unconscious beliefs and attitudes if you have someone already in mind.
- Go out of your way to find qualified women and minorities. If you have a fairly homogenous network, take the extra effort to go find qualified candidates.
- Showcase and promote qualified females and minorities that you know, so they can be found.
For point #3, I know in the recruiting world that employers can do boolean searches in Google to look for candidates that meet certain criteria (an example could be: belonging to an affinity group + use the world “female” in their bio, etc.). If you are a diverse candidate know what boolean searches are and get your resume and yourself discoverable using those keywords. If you have hiring power, make sure you are searching hard for diverse candidates. If you are a professor or in a position to do so, host the resumes of candidates on your website so they can be found.
Bloggers can ask diverse candidates to guest post on their site, speak on their podcasts, or just share their stuff on social media.
Here is a list of non-male engineers pursuing FIRE that I put together. (Male engineers seem to be the majority of early retirement seekers so I put this list together to encourage others).
Obviously, you want to ask permission before you put someone on a diversity list. This could go very badly, especially given that horrible people like the Google Manifesto author exist and will set limits on diverse candidates. It could also be illegal.
Any little thing you can do helps.
Why does diversity matter anyway?
To be completely honest, I’m sick of having to defend why diversity matters. It’s exhausting and I’ve put together lists of resources only to have them never looked at.
If you need to be given a plate of facts before you adopt this thinking, I encourage you to go out and google for it yourself. And I mean that seriously.
If you don’t believe diversity matters, actively try to go out and find information that disconfirm your beliefs.
Most people go out and try to affirm their beliefs so you’ll be getting a head start.
Be sure to consider who is writing the sources you are finding and where you are finding them.
(Tip: don’t search google manifesto. There were so many authors taking advantage of the google manifesto search traffic that everyone and their mother was writing something about it).
Why the Google Manifesto bothers me so much
Besides just being incorrect, I don’t like the Google Manifesto because I believe that any type of pop science by race, gender or some other protected class is deeply and ethically wrong.
Stuff like the Google Manifesto is very dangerous.
If you want to read some messed up stuff, google Eugenics and the “better babies” movement that happened in the U.S. in the early 1900s.
Pop science that is used to define people (such as saying women are biologically X, Y, or Z compared to men) scares me greatly.
In addition, as a woman who has been successful in tech, led a large team (who still contact me to this day for recommendations and advice), among other accomplishments – I am offended by the Google Manifesto BS and worried about it’s repercussions on my life and career.
I hate that the document could have strengthened stereotypes that hold people back.
Sorry, this post was not intended to be a rant
I’m sharing my story about picking the male voiceover artist for my podcast intro (at first) to show that we all make mistakes.
I’m well educated in feminist issues and I still F’ed up. I’m sorry for it.
This is not intended to be an attack on anyone.
I hope it makes us all think.
Oh, and if you want to listen to our FIRE podcast, we’d love to have you as a listener. We are proof that women + money = Awesomeness.
Get on our email list HERE to be notified of new episodes.
PS – Here is an interview with one of our amazing members of the FIRE community, which is episode 8 of the podcast.
If you like it, go to firedrillpodcast.com or subscribe in iTunes here.
Have you ever accidentally had an image of someone in mind for an opportunity and thinking back on it, it was kind of wrong?
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You are spot on!!! Framing the inclusion of any minority as “filling a quota” (that story made me cringe!) or lowering the bar ends up being counterproductive and creates negativity around diversity. But it is so easy to unconsciously go with the norm and the familiar without even realizing it!
I can’t wait to hear the newest badass FIRE podcast when you launch!
It is counterproductive! Thanks for your support on this and the podcast!
Today my husband mentioned that 4x of the Hosts/DJs on his fave radio station (hard rock) are all going on parental leave at the same time later this year.
I said, I didn’t realise they even had that many female hosts!
And immediately cringed when I realised what I instinctively said. Dads don’t get paid leave here but that doesn’t mean they don’t take time off. But that’s what I have internalised in my 29 years. Moments like that make me sad when I realise what preconceptions and assumptions have settled into my mind.
Isn’t it crazy how two feminists can easily slip into that bias too?! It’s not just “bad people” or “uneducated in these topics” people who are biased.
Took this blog off my RSS and am recommending my friends do as well.
Let me get this straight. You’re saying science trying to understand more about species and differences between genders using the scientific method is dangerous? It’s the pursuit of knowledge for the sake of knowledge. You don’t get to pick and choose what science you like and don’t like, as if research were a buffet.
Do it! Tell all of your friends!
There are very few empirical facts in the social sciences (example: the democratic peace – but even though basically all political scientists belief it exists, no one can agree on the causal mechanisms!)
This means that in social science you can find rigorous studies that support polar opposite findings. Plenty of good social science is based on observational data (like surveys) that use fancy statistics and other methods to mimic the scientific method of the natural sciences. There’s also great social science that utilizes experimental methods. These have excellent internal validity but the scholars have to to to great lengths to convince people of their claims to external validity (e.g. applicability to real world social situations where there are all kinds of causal confounders).
This is why in spite of its flaws, we have peer review for academic scholarship. One of the most glaring problems with referencing science to defend the Google Manifesto is that the heart of its claims have no foundations in peer-reviewed science. He makes statements about factors that science has linked to social and cultural factors and proceeds to make claims about biology and “innate differences.” It’s not that science is bad its that the Google Manifestos actual claims are not based on it.
Definitely a girl boss/feminist. (I have the t-shirt to prove it!) I’m a feminist in that I am a woman and see how society is built to overlook us. Our voice over artist is AWESOME and I’m so happy to support her side hustle!
You’re the best co-host ever! Can’t wait to launch!
My two girls are going to have some great FIRE role models later in life. Thanks!
Aww thank you for the kind words!
There are a lot of engineer FIRE bloggers out there. I didn’t realize it was a thing until after I started. Wonder why?
Anyway, my company could use some ladies in the engineering department. 12 engineers and only one woman. The problem is they are hard to find. The last engineering position we interviewed 17 people and only one was a woman. We did offer her the position but she turned us down.
So how do you get more women interested in pursuing engineering? My classrooms in undergrad basically represent my company’s ratio of men to women. About 90% guys and 10% women.
My daughter is about to turn one but she will be getting a strong push in that direction but I can’t force her if she isn’t interested.
I wasn’t planning on saying something, but I do feel this mentality deserves a response. I’m sorry you didn’t read the same thing I did, but many of his points weren’t wrong. I know of a certain fortune 50 company that flat out refused to hire someone that didn’t fit their “diversity” initiative, based on phone conversations in an open office my fiancee used to work for (only recently left). This company let positions hang open for months without even evaluating “non-diversity” candidates due to the fact that they hired solely on a person’s skin/sex vs. their ability to effectively do a job. Let’s say you are a “non-diversity” hire that works for this company and you overhear HR people saying that they will only hire persons that meet certain boxes. Would that not make you a little scared for your job? I personally would leave, but I generally don’t tolerate people viewing others through a prism of sex, skin color, etc. instead of the quality of a hire this person can be, and whether they will operate effectively in the environment they are placed in. I’m sure we have all worked in that office where you are around someone who just doesn’t “deserve” to be there, yet they are. Now what if that person is “rewarded” with a pay increase and promotion just due to their perceived “diversity” status?
Is it a good thing that there aren’t enough female or minority “engineers”, absolutely not. This applies more to females in my experience, but when I was in school for engineering, there were ONLY 3 females in my regular classes through my undergrad career (I think there were about 200 people that were in my regular “classes”, so that would be 1.5% of the students in the major being female). There were, unfortunately, only 2 of the 50 or so professors that were female. So is it really a “company’s” fault when they can’t find good talent to take these positions when persons of a certain sex aren’t pursuing those degrees? That’s not to say anything of the quality of the hires that those women would go on to be, it’s just to say that if the people don’t exist, how can you hire them?
I think there are some inherent bias in our daily lives that we as a society should work to overcome, but to say that some of the “diversity” initiates aren’t way off-base is just wrong. It’s not like it would, or should, be acceptable to pluck an “english” major in to start designing bridges, or developing code with no formal knowledge of the things they are building. However, that is what some of these “diversity” nightmares seem to want to create.
I’m sorry, but we will just have to agree to disagree. I can’t believe that anyone would ever think hiring based decisions should be made based on person’s race/sex/etc. If that’s not a step in the wrong direction, I don’t know what is.
>Men, would you be comfortable having a woman introduce you on your hypothetical podcast?
Abso-friggety-lutely. I want somebody endearing, not a cheesy Charlton Heston derivative. Enthusiasm and an audible smile beat basso profundo any day of the week.
SO glad you went with the lady intro! I work in construction so the heavy male everything is so typical and it is really refreshing when I meet a woman in charge of things.
Amazing how it seems so normal to have a guy intro a woman’s podcast, but it would be “so weird” for a woman to introduce a man’s podcast. Why flipping that on it’s head is so darn important.
>Men, would you be comfortable having a woman introduce you on your hypothetical podcast?
Absolutely comfortable. Any details for an intro/outro voiceover – of gender, timbre, accent, dialect, language, etc – is a marketing choice. If a voice fits the vibe of the show, go for it.