Do I really end all of my sentences with a question mark? Apparently I do. This was pointed out to me once when I was part of a business training program in the beginning of my sophomore year of college. I was practicing an interview and was told (by a male manager) that I raised the tone of my voice at the end of each of my sentences. He told me that I should work on keeping my voice stable throughout my speech in order to sound more professional. I thought that maybe something was wrong with the way I spoke. Then, this past month I was in a weekend Women and Politics seminar and Laura Liswood laid it out for me. She gave me a lesson on the differences between male and female speech patterns and how the different ways we speak affect societal relations between men and women. I realized that the only thing that was wrong with the way I was conducting my mock interview during my sophomore year was that I was “talking like a woman.”
Let me lay it out for you. (or should I say “Can I lay it out for you?")
When a woman needs something done by 5 o’clock before the office closes, she walks up to her assistant and says: “Hey, I really need this done by 5 today. Do you think you can do this by 5? It is really important that it gets done today, are you sure you can have it done by 5?”
A man listening to this conversation only hears, “ I am a woman. I don’t know what I want and I don’t know how to get things done.”
When a man needs something done by 5 he walks up to his assistant and says “Have this done by 5.”
A man listening to this conversation only hears, “Have this done by 5.”
Women tend to use a more invitational speech pattern that is heard as less authoritative than a man’s very direct speech pattern. Women invite other people into conversations because women want the input of others. Women are just as capable as men are when it comes to having someone accomplish a task for them by 5 o’clock. The difference is that women ask to have it done while men demand to have it done.
One pattern of speech is not necessary intrinsically right or wrong, but society has come to value the direct, typical male pattern of speech over the invitational pattern of speech common among women. Placing a higher value on what is generally a male speech pattern holds women back, especially in professional settings like business and politics. Women are told that they must speak more like a man if they are going to be “right”, as I experienced after conducting my mock interview.
What makes this situation truly unfortunate for women is that once a woman does take on the direct speech pattern that is valued in society, the situation plays out like this:
A woman needs something done by 5 o’clock so she says to her assistant “Have this done by 5.”
Now men hear, “Wow a woman that knows what she wants. What a total bitch.”
This is because once a woman takes on characteristics typically associated with men, like a direct speech pattern, she must fight a battle with her “tooness”. By taking on an archetype male characteristic in order to be taken seriously, a woman becomes
too masculine and must face criticism. Therefore, the society we live in leaves women with two choices:
1) be consistently held back because of who we are
or
2) challenge the female archetype and deal with being referred to in the office, or by Chris Matthews, as an icy bitch.
My hope for you is that you choose the latter. Who takes Chris Matthews seriously anyway?
