CLEVELAND, Ohio — Emma Sedlak, an 18-year-old senior at Hawken School, doesn’t know how to explain it, without sounding “like I’m flexing.” But she knows she’s good at debate.

Sedlack, the first female president of her school debate and speech club, never hesitates to tell you what she thinks. Her performances rank highly, both at the state level and nationally.

But still, she believes she’s judged more harshly because she’s a girl.

Here’s a sample of feedback she’s received since her freshman year, three years ago:

Too aggressive. Too angry. Too emotional. Don’t interrupt him, let him finish. This isn’t a fashion show, focus on the argument. She was once even told that she shouldn’t wear high heels: They gave her an aggressive walk.

But, the thing is, being aggressive is what makes Emma, Emma. Anyone who knows her knows she’s never afraid to voice her opinion, loudly.

“It's something that makes me think that I have to balance who I am, with who I have to be to win,” she said.

She believes the debate competition judges -- many of whom are parents who donate their Saturdays so their kids can compete -- fall into the trap of implicit bias: when people react based on unconscious feelings, even when they run counter to what they say they believe.

She’s on to something: Research shows that when boys are aggressive and assertive, they’re aren’t penalized the same way as girls.

Girls are about 10 times as likely as boys to be criticized for being emotional in the most popular debate event, according to research conducted by Shaker Heights debate coach and teacher.

Rich Kawolics, the director of speech and debate at the all-girls Laurel School, studies gender disparity in high school speech and debate competition. He’s also a former chair of the Ohio Speech and Debate board of Directors, the group that organizes competitions statewide.

If girls are called out as being aggressive or assertive, it’s game over. They lose, Kawolics said. But if a boy is called out for being aggressive or assertive, he still has a 50/50 shot of winning.

Working with his students, Kawolics examined feedback from public forum events across the country between 2016 and 2018.

About 20 percent of the girls participating are criticized for how they speak. That’s about twice the number of boys who receive the same criticism.

Kawolics and his team of student researchers also looked at girl’s success rates in debates. The numbers weren’t good.

The number of girls participating in weekly debate competitions was about 42 percent in public forum, their research, which focused on the 2016-17 season, found. But as the competition advanced, the girls’ representation in the competition dropped: The number of girls who advanced to the final round was 12 percent.

In more than half of tournaments examined, all of the competitors in the final round were boys.

In other forms of debate, like Lincoln Douglas style and extemporaneous speaking, girls have similarly low levels of success.

Kawolics, who’s been a debate coach for 18 years, found that there was nothing to suggests girls aren’t as good at debate as boys. Rather, he found research that indicated some social constructs favor boys over girls in debate.

Kawolics said that as a culture, we are more accepting of certain attributes, including aggressiveness or assertiveness, from men. When men become assertive, their voices often drop, and it’s perceived as positive. When women becomes assertive their pitch rises, which is viewed as a negative.

Debate coaches sometimes teach within the system, telling girls to moderate their tone, take it down a notch, both Emma and Kawolics said. That’s because they know this bias exists, and they want girls to win.

You’re at a level 10. Take it down to a four.

“That that’s a heck of a burden to put on a female debater to when you’re not putting the same burden on a male debater, right,” Kawolics who avoids the strategy, said in an interview.

The speech and debate community is behind the curve when it comes to addressing implicit bias, he said, with efforts just starting within the last year. Still, Kawolics believes there a growing openness in the debate community to address the problem.

“The Speech and Debate community has been very slow to catch on to the fact that these are implicit biases that people carry with them, and that these implicit biases may cause them to render a decision that favors a male debater over female debater just based on socially constructed gender norms,” Kawolics said.

This leaves Emma and her friends rolling their eyes after a debate at the gendered comments they receive.

Still, Emma believes debate judges are good people. She knows without them, she couldn’t compete. She wanted to make them aware of this problem.

So she decided to do something. She created an educational video explaining implicit bias, and its implications in debate for judges, featuring Kawolics, her fellow Hawken students, and a student from Kenston, talking about their experiences. She played the video at a tournament at her school last week, and said it seemed to be well-received.

One coach even asked if she could play the video at her school’s upcoming tournament.

Emma says her goal could be to send the most people to state and nationals and win trophies. But she would rather work to make debate more equal.

“At the end of the day, I’d rather make an impact on the program that I know is going to make it more inclusive,” she said. “To make it a more equal playing field.”