Why build a women-only space for English speaking practice?

Why would an English-speaking community be just for women?

It's one of the questions we're asked most often. Some people think it's unfair. Others wonder if it goes against diversity and inclusion. And many simply want to understand why we made that decision.

✨ Start your free Hey Lady! trial

In this episode of the Hey Lady! Confident English Podcast, Emma explains why Hey Lady! was created as a women-only community, what research tells us about participation and confidence, and why the environment we practise in has such a powerful effect on our ability to speak up.

You'll also discover why women-only doesn't mean less diversity, and why creating one space where women can find their voice helps them carry that confidence into every other part of life.

Whether you agree, disagree or are simply curious, I hope this episode gives you a different perspective on why environment matters when we're learning to speak with confidence.

💬 About Emma

Emma is the founder of Hey Lady! and creator of the YouTube channel mmmEnglish, trusted by more than 6 million English learners worldwide.

Hey Lady! is a global English-speaking community where women build confidence through real conversations, connection and consistent speaking practice.

✨ Join Hey Lady! free for 7 days

💬 Have a question or challenge you'd like Emma to talk about in a future episode?

You can send a voice message or share your experience below.

Transcript

0:00

When people hear that a community or a group is women only, they tend to react in a few different ways. Some people absolutely love it. Some people think that it's a kind of political statement, like you're taking a side in a debate about equality. Some people think it's old-fashioned. Others think that it is wrong to exclude people. And some just think it's unfair, like if something good is happening over there, then everyone should be able to do it. And I'm all for that. These are fair opinions. So today I wanna talk about this. Why is Hey Lady! a speaking community for women? And are women-only spaces important or relevant still? Hey, everyone. Welcome back, and if you are joining us here for the very first time, a big welcome to you as well. This is the Confident English Podcast. I'm your host, Emma, and the founder of Hey Lady!, an online community where women from all around the world come together to practise speaking English. Every week, right here, we help you to overcome the barriers that stop you from speaking with confidence, whether that's at work, while you're traveling, or just in everyday life. If you've been learning English for years, and yet you still freeze when it's your turn to speak, you're in the right place. Let's get into today's episode. We get comments and questions from time to time about why Hey Lady! is a community for women only. And so I thought I'd take some time today to respond to some of these opinions and these thoughts. Hey Lady! is not a political statement. It is a practical answer to a practical problem, the problem of women who don't yet have the confidence to speak up in their non-native language. Now, you might have heard me talk a lot about Hey Lady! being a safe space for women, a safe and supportive space. Now, I can understand how this idea of being safe can be taken in the wrong way. If it's a safe space for women, does that mean that any space with men in it is unsafe? No. That is not at all what we mean. There are plenty of mixed gender spaces that are warm and supportive and wonderful. But does that automatically mean that every group should be mixed? Wouldn't that depend on why the group exists in the first place? What are its members trying to do together? What kind of support do they actually need? It's easy to look at a women-only space and just immediately ask why men are being left out. But I think that's the wrong question. The first question to ask about any community isn't who is or is not allowed in, it's what actually happens inside. Picture a group of women having lunch at a big, long table, but just women. They've been talking for an hour or so. Some of them down that end are laughing and talking over the top of each other. The others down here are talking more softly, and they're speaking about some challenges that they're having at home. They're at ease chatting with each other in these different conversations. And then one man walks in and sits down. He is a good man. He is a kind man. We already know what happens next. Nothing. Nothing dramatic. Nobody asks him to leave. They include him in the conversation. But something shifts. The energy changes a little. A few things that were being said out in the open just stop being said. And nobody planned that. It just happens. And I want you to picture a second table, uh, a group of older men. They're laughing. They're very relaxed. They're talking openly about life in a way that they usually don't at home. And then a woman sits down, and the same thing happens. Not because she did anything wrong, just because the room changed. The dynamic shifts, and the unspoken rules about what is safe to say and about how vulnerable you can be, they've changed with that dynamic. Now, I'm sure that you have seen this happen, right? In some context or another. Whether or not it matters depends entirely on why the group came together in the first place. What if I told you that that first table was a support group, a support group for new mothers? And the men, they were part of a group who were working through some challenges with their mental health. Well, suddenly asking whether it's fair to go and join them doesn't quite make sense, does it? Is it really unfair that you can't join a new mother's group if you've never actually been a mother? Of course not. People come to these groups for one reason, and that reason is the relief that they don't have to explain themselves. Everyone in that room or around that table understands what they're going through because they've been there and they've been through it too. And you see this everywhere, in support groups, in professional networks, in sports clubs, health programs. Some of them are mixed, others aren't. And what decides that isn't fairness. It's all about what happens in the room. So if the room changes when men and women are together, then here's the real question for us. What is it about that change that makes it harder for women to speak up? Because at Hey Lady! that's the problem we're trying to solve. Studies on mixed-gendered meetings or mixed-gendered conversations show a really clear pattern. Women often speak far less than half the time. They get interrupted more, they wait longer for a turn, and they soften their opinions even when they're certain or confident of the answer. Not every study agrees on the exact numbers, by the way, and the research is still growing, but the main point still stands. Equal numbers in a room does not mean equal participation. Even with as many women as men, the women speak less. They get heard less. And this isn't about men doing anything wrong. It's a quiet social habit, a habit that has built up over hundreds of years and generations in almost every culture. It follows women into every room, even when nobody wants it to. And I don't need a study to tell me this. No woman does. I've lived it myself. I've watched it happen with my own eyes in thousands of conversations that I've been a part of, and in over a decade of teaching English to language learners and building a community of women who are learning to speak it. Women already speak less. That's true before they even try to speak in their non-native language. So for a woman learning to speak a language that is not her native language, where she already feels awkward and exposed as she tries to express herself, well, that weight on her shoulders is even heavier. The last thing that she needs is a room that makes her feel like there's less space for her input, less space for her voice. And here's the thing, when it comes to speaking fluency, participation is everything. Participation is how confidence grows. So it might sound a little strange at first when you say it out loud, but if you really want to help a woman speak in her non-native language with confidence, the mixed room, the one that is open to everyone, might be the very thing that is holding her back from joining in. Where's the diversity? I love this one because Hey Lady! might be one of the most diverse places that you will ever find. Our members come from more than 120 countries. You'll see a 60-year-old woman from India chatting with a 26-year-old Italian woman and a 42-year-old in Saudi Arabia. Women who would normally never be sitting in the same conversation sharing various aspects of their life, work or what it looks like where they're from. We're the same on one thing, gender, and that's so we can be wildly different on everything else. It makes it safer and more inclusive for more diverse cultures to mix. Taking gender off the table doesn't shrink the diversity, it opens it up. So what does happen inside a space built for women who are working on their confidence? Lots of people assume that Hey Lady! is a school, a school where students go to classes. This is a really common misconception. Our professional English coaches run language workshops, trainings, and guided conversations which our members can always attend. But the vast majority of conversations and study groups and things that are happening inside Hey Lady! are led by members, really motivated women who are showing up for themselves, but also for each other. Our members run their own conversations. They hold space for each other. They lead discussions. They experiment with different ideas and topics. They build confidence with the support of each other. And because they're in spaces together learning how to be more independent in English, they are using real courage. Hey Lady! was designed specifically to help maximize that psychological safety, that participation, so that more women learn how to be independent in their non-native language, and communicate without a teacher always being present. And our members tell us again and again and again that inside Hey Lady!, they don't feel judgment. They don't feel shame. They don't feel awkward. They're more willing to make mistakes. And through that process, they learn how to feel like themselves when they're speaking in English. And if you're a woman who feels unlike herself in English, who hesitates before you speak, imagine being surrounded by other brilliant non-native speaking women who are doing it alongside you. When you see other women who are showing up, leading conversations, making a mistake, and not worrying about that fear or that judgment, you feel so empowered to do the same. Speaking up becomes something that you do without thinking about it, without fear. It becomes normal. Everyone around you is doing it, and so you keep doing it, and it becomes a habit. So you develop that confidence faster. You gain experience faster. For any women-only space, the environment is not the final destination. It's not intended to be where you spend your entire English-speaking life. We don't build confidence by just pretending that all of the barriers out there don't exist. We build confidence by giving you a place where those barriers are removed for a little while so that you can develop the feel of English, and you can get more comfortable using it, so that when you take your English from inside Hey Lady! out into the world, you bring a version of yourself who has already found her voice. She already knows what it's like to speak up, to interrupt, to steer a conversation in a different direction, or to share a different opinion. Now, to some of the guys who wrote to us and said, "It's not fair. We struggle with English, too. We feel this way, too," you're right. You do, and that struggle is real. That struggle deserves a space built around it. But Hey Lady! is not that space. There are so many other amazing English-speaking communities that exist that you can access. This is not one of them. And if it still frustrates you, then consider this an invitation. The world needs more spaces where people feel safe enough to be imperfect, to make mistakes, to find their way. So go and build it. I will be the first person to cheer you on, honestly. I also wanna take a moment to be really frank, to be straight up. Most men don't realise what it's like to be a woman online. They have not lived it or probably given it any thought at all that in any random space where you enter, this could be online or offline, but in any space you enter, there could be people making comments about your appearance, asking you for your number, telling you how much they love you or what they would do to you. And I'm gonna call it out for what it is. It's harassment, and if nothing else, it's just annoying and it's distracting when you are showing up to educate yourself, to learn and to work on your skills And while some may think that it's unfair that they're not able to join Hey Lady!, I got sick and tired of seeing women in all of my online spaces commenting, stepping up, making themselves known, and then disappearing into the shadows again because they were made to feel uncomfortable or unsure or awkward by men who felt compelled to speak at them. And that is the reason why I created Hey Lady! in the first place, because women need spaces where they don't need to think twice about joining a conversation for speaking practice with someone that they've never met before. Imagine that, ladies, not even having to worry about it. So if you've been avoiding speaking English because you're scared of making mistakes or you're worried about being judged, there is one thing that I want you to think deeply about. Where are you speaking? What is the space? What is the environment around you like when you are trying to speak? Is it a space where you feel included, where you feel supported? Is it a space where you feel motivated to show up regularly and keep going to speak more? If you're a woman, if you're over 18 and your English level is intermediate, upper intermediate, or advanced, and you want to speak English more confidently, come and see how we do it inside Hey Lady! We have a free seven-day trial, you can sign up right now and get started today. The link is down in the description, but if you're watching on YouTube, you can also scan the code that you see up on screen. And if you have a comment about today's episode, whether you agree with me or you disagree with me or you're somewhere in between, then please leave me a comment down below. I read every single one of them. And as you saw today, your comments shape what we talk about here on the Confident English podcast. If you're still here and you're still listening, thank you so much for your time I really hope that this has given you a different perspective on why the Hey Lady! community is for women and why it is necessary to have a space like this for women who are becoming themselves in English. Have a wonderful week, and I will see you in the next episode