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“Men have the belief that women who talk more are talking about less, that their topics are trivial. The reality is that in cross gender situations, men speak more and hold the floor for longer. Men don’t listen and they just hear chatter,” said Steele.

Also, women who talk more, or who adopt more typically “masculine” methods of speaking are criticized by men as “bitchy” or “controlling.”

Steele recalls one male student in a class who constantly tried to fight with her to gain control of the class.

“He just could not accept that I was not your traditional female teacher. When there is a woman teacher and a few men, the men vie for power with the feminine instructor to get control of the class. It’s really a very odd situation,” said Steele.

Now that women are taking on less traditional roles, and treading into fields typically dominated by men, they often find themselves having to make a choice between retaining their feminine modes of speaking and thus being ignored, or adopting more masculine methods of speech. As noted before, women who display more assertive behavior are often denigrated because of it, even though they are utilizing the same speech patterns as their male counterparts. It is also a loss in some respects when they do decide to relinquish their feminine speaking practices, said Steele.

Women are the peacemakers, the consensus builders, the negotiators. During meetings, such as the one that Steele had attended, women seek to include everyone in the conversation. Their speech is typically more tentative and polite. Instead of declarative statements, utilized mostly by men, women employ more qualifying or qualitative statements. The hesitancy, politeness and tentativeness of feminine speech are often construed as weakness, stupidity or inarticulateness, according to Steele.

This need not always be the case though. Women do not need to abandon their speech patterns entirely in order to succeed in the modern world.

“What needs to happen is that men need to recognize the skills and abilities of women speakers not as a sign of weakness. Men have to learn not to steam roll over those who do not give them direct opposition,” Steele.

Women can retain their speech patterns.

“I feel a certain degree of loss that in order to be taken seriously, I have to sound like someone who has to be taken seriously. I have to be less nurturing and more aggressive. It is a tremendous loss if women abandon skills entirely,” said Felicia.

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