INTERVIEW ALI ROFF
What initially sparked your interest in the subject of women and decision-making?
People aren’t blind to gender – in fact, it’s one of the first things that they notice about a decision-maker. That can be problematic for women. There was a moment when this topic clicked for me. I was thumbing through a book on decision-making, a bestseller, and I noticed that all of the stories were about men. I propped open several other books on decision-making and, sure enough, they too focused primarily on men and their decisions. It seemed ‘gendered’ to study gender, but the topic kept nagging at me. It got me wondering what a book about women and decision-making might look like. There’s the notion that women are indecisive – that ‘it’s a woman’s prerogative to change her mind’ – and then there’s the mysterious notion of ‘women’s intuition’. My curiosity was stoked. What did research say about gender and decision-making?