Do women talk more than men? Proverbs and sayings in many languages express the view that women are always talking:
Women’s tongues are like lambs’ tails – they are never still. –English The North Sea will sooner be found wanting in water than a woman at a loss for words. –Jutlandic The woman with active hands and feet, marry her, but the woman with overactive mouth, leave well alone. –Maori
Some suggest that while women talk, men are silent patient listeners.
When both husband and wife wear pants it is not difficult to tell them apart – he is the one who is listening. –American Nothing is so unnatural as a talkative man or a quiet woman. –Scottish
Others indicate that women’s talk is not valued but is rather considered noisy, irritating prattle:
Where there are women and geese, there’s noise. –Japanese.
Indeed, there is a Japanese character which consists of three instances of the character for the concept ‘woman’ and which translates as ‘noisy’! My favourite proverb, because it attributes not noise but rather power to the woman speaker is this Chinese one:
The tongue is the sword of a woman and she never lets it become rusty.
So what are the facts? Do women dominate the talking time? Do men struggle to get a word in edgewise, as the stereotype suggests?
Despite the widespread belief that women talk more than men, most of the available evidence suggests just the opposite. When women and men are together, it is the men who talk most. Two Canadian researchers, Deborah James and Janice Drakich, reviewed sixty-three studies which examined the amount of talk used by American women and men in different contexts. Women talked more than men in only two studies.
In New Zealand, too, research suggests that men generally dominate the talking time. Margaret Franken compared the amount of talk used by female and male ‘experts’ assisting a female TV host to interview well-known public figures. In a situation where each of three interviewers was entitled to a third of the interviewers’ talking time, the men took more than half on every occasion.
I found the same pattern analysing the number of questions asked by participants in one hundred public seminars. In all but seven, men dominated the discussion time. Where the numbers of women and men present were about the same, men asked almost two-thirds of the questions during the discussion. Clearly women were not talking more than men in these contexts.
Even when they hold influential positions, women sometimes find it hard to contribute as much as men to a discussion. A British company appointed four women and four men to the eight most highly paid management positions. The managing director commented that the men often patronized the women and tended to dominate meetings.
I had a meeting with a [female] sales manager and three of my [male] directors once…it took about two hours. She only spoke once and one of my fellow directors cut across her and said ‘What Anne is trying to say Roger is…’ and I think that about sums it up. He knew better than Anne what she was trying to say, and she never got anything said.
There is abundant evidence that this pattern starts early. Many researchers have compared the relative amounts that girls and boys contribute to classroom talk. In a wide range of communities, from kindergarten through primary, secondary and tertiary education, the same pattern recurs – males dominate classroom talk. So on this evidence we must conclude that the stereotype of the garrulous woman reflects sexist prejudice rather than objective reality.
Looking for an Explanation
Why is the reality so different from the myth? To answer this question, we need to go beyond broad generalizations and look more carefully at the patterns identified. Although some teachers claim that boys are ‘by nature more spirited and less disciplined’, there is no evidence to suggest that males are biologically programmed to talk more than females. It is much more likely that the explanation involves social factors.
What is the Purpose of the Talk?
One relative clue is the fact that talk serves different functions in different contexts. Formal public talk is often aimed at informing people or persuading them to agree to a particular point of view (e.g. political speeches, television debates, radio interviews, public lectures, etc.). Public talk is often undertaken by people who wish to claim or confirm some degree of public status. Effective talk in public and in the media can enhance your social status – as politicians and other public performers know well. Getting and holding the floor is regarded as desirable, and competition for the floor in such contexts is common. (There is also some risk, of course, since a poor performance can be damaging.)