06/13/2025

The Five-minute Trick Men Use that Undermines Women in Meetings

Here are three ways to stop ‘theftosterone’

Theftosterone (noun): When a woman shares an idea with her colleagues, perhaps in a meeting, and five minutes later, a man says almost the exact same thing, posing it as his own original idea in an effort to bolster his professional reputation at the expense of hers. (This aggression is exacerbated when the collective response to the woman is lackluster but the man gets credit for “his” great suggestion and is all too happy to bask in the praise without the slightest sense of guilt.)

It doesn't matter how smart or accomplished the woman is, men still conversationally steamroll them and sometimes outright steal their ideas. We call this phenomenon "theftosterone."

It happens even in the highest court in the land. Transcripts of 15 years of Supreme Court oral arguments show that as more women have joined the court, male justices have increased their interruptions of the female justices. Many male justices interrupt female justices at double-digit rates per term, but the reverse is almost never true. During a 12-year span, when women made up 24 percent of the bench, 32 percent of interruptions were of the female justices; however, only 4 percent were by female justices. Strangely, as the gender imbalance on the court has lessened over the past several years, the incidents of this have not gone down. In fact, they've increased.

Please select this link to read the complete article from Fast Company.