Women Talk Too Much
Is what they want you to think. Women are loud, obnoxious, annoying, and talk off the ears of men. Unfortunately I wish this were true. Now, I’m not here to present unfounded claims and accusations in order to blame another party for women’s lack of voice. I’m not here to call all men sexist for thinking that women speak too much. I’m simply here to present to you my evidence, for how and why women don’t speak enough.
Firstly, men tend to statistically have more social confidence more social confidence in larger, unfamiliar groups, whereas women are much more comfortable speaking in smaller more known groups. Research within classrooms done by Columbia University (New York, n.d) found that not only do male students speak for longer periods of time and more frequently than female colleagues, but they are also called upon more frequently, thus eliminating the chance for girls to begin changing these facts. Studies have also shown that teachers, regardless of their gender, tend to take up 2 thirds of class discussions, but for the remaining third boys dominate the conversation. This can be for a number of reasons, but one could be the climb in social status. By taking the majority of the time to speak in classrooms up (although this can be switched to any number of scenarios in the workplace, family gatherings etc.), boys are in fact asserting themselves to claim the higher status by speaking at length, showing off confidence and intelligence (even if what they have to say isn’t intelligent at all).
Women, of course, dominate the conversation in groups of their own gender. Men do the same. It’s not only statistically undeniable, but it is also natural to feel more comfortable with people you have an immediate and visible similarity with. So of course one woman is going to talk and speak up more in a group of other women than one woman in a group of men. And it works the other way too, for the most part. This is of course a gross generalisation, and there will always be one domineering individual, male or female, in each group. But claiming that all women speak too much down to the fact that when it’s in a large group of familiar women we tend to chat a lot is ridiculous.
Calling back to my point on social confidence, the fact that the majority of men have more confidence to speak up in unfamiliar situations and women do not has huge real world issues. One such being the gender pay gap, and I’ll focus on the pay gap in the BBC. On the 19th of July this year, ITV released an article analysing the salaries of the top BBC News Presenters. It was found that “within the top 20 highest paid on-air stars, only five are female” (ITV Report, July 2017). Not only that but, “the highest paid male on-air star is paid between four and five times the amount of the highest paid female on-air star.” Just to put that into perspective, the highest paid female on-air star is Claudia Winkleman at around £500,000 a year. Whereas the highest paid male on-air star is Chris Evans who is earning around £2 million a year.
I believe that the reason for this huge gender pay gap is down to this standing social confidence that men and women have. As I stated before, women aren’t as good at speaking out in unfamiliar situations than men, therefore it is clear that where female on-air stars were happy with their salary and didn’t dispute it, their male counterparts did. I personally believe that a salary for a job, example an on-air presenter, should be kept the same for every individual performing said job, but obviously that isn’t the case.
From the information I’ve presented to you I hope one thing stands out. Stats and statistics from history or the present shouldn’t determine what we can and can’t do. Just because statistically men are more socially confident doesn’t immediately mean us women have to stand down and be the opposite. It also doesn’t mean that just because men will fight to get a better raise and won’t stop until their salary is in the millions women can’t do the same. Wouldn’t you prefer to talk too much and be heard, than not talk enough and be silenced?
Thank you.
References
Gender Issues in the College Classroom[Scholarly project]. (n.d.). In Columbia University . Retrieved from http://www.columbia.edu/cu/tat/pdfs/gender.pdf
BBC salaries reveal who highest paid stars are. (2017, July 19). Retrieved September 17, 2017, from http://www.itv.com/news/2017-07-19/bbc-salaries-revealed-chris-evans-gary-linekar-and-graham-norton-highest-paid-stars/
Fig. 1 - Anger in The Work Place (http://www.hec.edu/Knowledge/Strategy-Management/Leadership-Management/Anger-in-the-Workplace-Men-vs.-Women-Unequal-rage)