100 Women challenge: Breaking the glass ceiling

1. A team of women in Silicon Valley have spent a week trying to tackle a problem - the glass ceiling
2. Their innovations were unveiled at an event at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California
3. BBC 100 Women names 100 influential and inspirational women around the world every year
4. Upcoming challenges are tackling female illiteracy (Delhi); improving public transport safety for women (London); and challenging sexism in sport (Rio de Janeiro)

Your reaction to Katty Kay's story

The confidence gap between women and men

Katty Kay

World News America presenter

Columbia Business School in New York calls it "honest over-confidence" - that easy tendency men have to believe they are more able than they actually are.

In fact, says Columbia, men tend to overestimate their abilities by something like 30%. And it's not that they're faking this confidence, they genuinely believe it.

We women, on the other hand, tend routinely to underestimate our abilities. Our perception of our talent skews lower than our actual worth.

This is what we've dubbed the confidence gap and over the course of a career it can lead to fewer promotions, limited opportunities and less pay.

Read more from Katty

BBC

Katty Kay's book The Confidence Code explores gender dynamics

The discussion begins...

The BBC's Nuala McGovern is leading our discussion from the OZY newsroom in Silicon Valley for the first ever 100 Women challenge.

Among the women there is Marilyn Loden, a diversity consultant who coined the term "glass ceiling" on a panel almost 40 years ago!

But the problem persists today.

Studies show that women are interrupted (by both genders) more than men; that men speak significantly more in meetings than women do (one study found they account for 75% of conversation); that even when women speak less they are perceived to have spoken more; and that male execs who talk more than their peers are viewed to be more competent, while female execs are viewed as less competent.

If you have any thoughts on this subject please let us know on Twitter by using the hashtag #100Women.

Listen live: Glass ceiling brainstorm

Our live discussion from Silicon Valley will start in a few minutes live on BBC World Service radio.

You will hear from women battling sexism in the tech industry and meet our experts, who have a week to come up with innovations to help smash the glass ceiling.

And we will be broadcasting some of your ideas too.

Listen here, or you will be able to click the link at the top of the page once the show begins.

Watch: The challenge begins

This is the moment our core #teamlead members found out what their task was for the week.

100 Women: First challenge revealed in Silicon Valley

Meet #teamlead: The women tackling the glass ceiling

We’ve brought together a group of four brilliant women who will be thinking up a product that could chip away at the glass ceiling.

They are Lori Mackenzie, a specialist in gender diversity; artificial intelligence specialist Rumman Chowdury; product designer Roya Ramezani; and software engineer Natalia Margolis.

They are reaching out to people in their networks to come and help them with the task – remember, they only have until Friday!

Let’s let them introduce themselves:

Welcome to 100 Women's first challenge!

Good morning from Silicon Valley where the 100 Women team is getting ready to host a global brainstorm session on chipping away at the glass ceiling.

We have found four amazing women from academia and the tech industry here in California and we're asking them to create a product in just five days to help boost women's participation in the workplace!

You will be able to listen to the brainstorm live on BBC World Service Radio's Outside Source programme from 16:00 GMT.

The discussion will involve our four experts, other contributors here in the Valley, and you, the audience from around the world.

We will be looking at a whole range of issues, from confidence, to participation in meetings, maternity leave, to working hours, involving men in the conversation, to unconscious bias - anything that you feel holds women back at work.

If you have any thoughts, please let us know on Twitter by using the hashtag #100Women.

BBC