18 The Linguist Vol/56 No/1 2017
www.ciol.org.uk
FEATURES
Rachael Ryan explores the gender imbalance in
conference interpreting from the male perspective
I
n February 2013, the US President, Barack
Obama, said: "One of the things that
I really strongly believe in is that we need
to have more girls interested in math, science
and engineering. We've got half the
population that is way underrepresented in
those fields and that means that we've got a
whole bunch of talent… that is not being
encouraged." The deficit of women in
science, technology, engineering and
mathematics (STEM) has led to innumerable
studies and initiatives looking to remedy the
gender imbalance. The Executive Office of
the President states that achieving gender
balance within these fields "is not just the
right thing to do, but the smart thing to do".
Gender imbalance, which can sway towards
either sex, is a phenomenon which affects
conference interpreting – a profession with a
preponderance of women. Of the 551 staff
interpreters at the European Commission's
Directorate General for Interpreting, 69% are
women, as well as 74% of more than 3,000
accredited freelance conference interpreters.
1
However, while the STEM subjects are
striving to remedy this inequality within their
professions because it is seen as "the right
thing to do", there seems to be a lack of
similar research in conference interpreting.
In order to address this, I decided to
explore the perspectives, experiences and
motivations of male interpreters in a field
that is considered to be 'feminised'.
For my thesis, I used a mixed-method
approach, combining qualitative and
quantitative research. I interviewed
experienced male conference interpreters
and conducted an anonymous online survey
to explore two principle research questions:
1) What are the motivations for men to
become conference interpreters? and
2) According to the opinions of participants,
what has caused the gender imbalance in
the profession?
The respondents were motivated by four
things: remuneration, flexibility, excitement
and meaningfulness. Although remuneration
motivated the majority, many chose their
career for the freelance aspect. According
to some participants, had conference
interpreting not been a flexible career, they
would not have been able to pursue it.
A theme that emerged was that participants
had often had earlier career paths, choosing
conference interpreting because of the
tedium of previous professional work.
Respondent G "was getting bored with
my career as a translator, and went from
translation to interpretation (a natural
transition)". Respondent S explained that he
"just wanted to try something different from
what I was doing at that time". Likewise,
respondent V wanted to develop on
"previous professional work". According to
Ditsa Kafry, tedium can be triggered by "the
need for meaningfulness and achievement",
2
A woman's
world
