„If you think women talk too much, it could be because you expect them to talk so little“

Who actually owns the soundscape?

Jul 25, 2022

I’m sitting on the train as I’m typing this. Behind me, a man sips his coffee. I don’t have to turn around in order to gather this information. He goes: slurp - sigh - slurp - slurp -sigh - slurp, in what feels like an endless rhythm. On the other side of the aisle from me, in the quiet zone, another man is talking on his phone. At the luggage racks, another man is looking for something in his bag, loudly swearing as he can’t find it.

I was on another train on Sunday, same scenario. A man in his 60s spread out over two seats one row behind me. He snorts like a horse in regular intervals. I wonder, is he sick? Does he need a doctor? But he looks content, blissfully unaware that half the compartment is eyeing him. Every one of his moves is accompanied with a sound, a harrumph, an aaahhh or an oyoyoyoy.

It’s comical, but it also made me aware that men are much more present in public soundscapes than women. Men unapologetically take up space, not just visibly, but audibly. Think about the last time you heard a grown (sober) woman burp or go „harrumph“ in train compartment? I’m sure they exist, but my anecdotal data says those sounds usually erupt from men (not from all men, of course).

Is this a surprising and novel observation? No. And we don’t have to look far to find explanations. Who are public spaces made for in a patriarchal society? Who feels safe? Who would rather not be noticed? Who is taught to take up as little space as possibly, by crossing their legs, by sucking in their tummy, by shrinking their bodies? By keeping their voice down?

Also, you may have heard the term „girls should be seen, not heard“. This used to be „children should be seen, not heard“ and has its origin in the renaissance. Yet in practice it is mostly applied to girls (or was – I do think times they are a-changing, slowly) .

Girls were expected to smile and „behave“, to be agreeable. When I was little, I was shushed so many times by family members that I eventually started shushing other girls. Surprisingly, I was not the most popular girl in elementary school.

I have been trying to find some actual hard data on the noise-in-public-phenomenon, but there are no reliable statistics on who harrumphs or burps more in public yet (get cracking, scientists!). However, there is other data on who gets to make noise and who doesn’t.

Last year, Adam Grant published a useful overview of recent studies in the Washington Post. The research shows that even though many men perceive women to „talk too much“ in a business meeting, it’s actually men who get the most speaking time. (It’s different for social settings, where women are expected to do the emotional labour of creating harmonious rapport – but that’s a different topic).

There are plenty of studies on this, one that gets quoted a lot is this one from Brigham Young University, which found that women speak 25% less in a project group when they are outnumbered by men.

Or this study from 2017, which analysed 155.000 company conference calls over the past 19 years for Bloomberg and found: men spoke 92% of the time. 92%! Ok, sure, there are also more men in executives roles, but still!

Even when they speak in meetings, women get interrupted much more than men do. I have heard the term “manterrupting”, but it’s actually not just men who interrupt women.

The most infuriating research result is that when women actually manage to speak up (without being interrupted), their perceived competence drops by 35% – and they are often demonised as “bossy” and “aggressive”.

So, in the business world women walk a tightrope: Either don’t speak up and get overlooked, or do speak up and possibly face repercussions for being unlikeable or “too assertive” (and also a threat to the male ego).

It seems a little hopeless. Especially when you look at the recent analysis of film dialogues by Hannah Anderson and Matt Daniels for The Pudding. They took 2000 screenplays of movies and basically just counted lines. Who gets to speak more?

Result: In 1.500 out of 2.000 movies, men had 60% or more dialogue. 300 of those films had a > 90% quota. Even in a movie like “Mulan”, which is centered around a girl, her (male) protector dragon gets to say 50% more words than Mulan. The same number applies to “Notting Hill”, a movie directed at a female audience. “Grand Budapest Hotel”, a movie which I really enjoyed when it came out, reserves a whooping 1% of the dialogue for its female characters.

It’s a lot of numbers, but the conclusion is: Men dominate the dialogue on screen. We simply do not hear women. So if female leads get 50% less speaking time than men in a movie which revolves around the woman, it’s no surprise that women generally feel as if we are „too much“ or “too intrusive” when we take up half of the speaking time in a conversation.

And that also explains why the false perception of “women talk too much” is so persistent. As Adam Grant put it:

„If you think women talk too much, it could be because you expect them to talk so little.“

pop culture pleasures

“The Kardashians of Norway are middle-distance runners …” – I hope this is enough to pull you into this NYT-portrait of the Ingebritsen family.

Is self-care making us lonely?

“I have encountered people in my practice who become deeply involved in healing and self-care in a way that becomes so engrossing they can’t live their lives.”

Continue this train of thought with Jessica DeFino’s interview with Fariha Róisín about who has access to beauty and wellness. Róisín makes a good point that self-care should always be tied to community care.

Viola Davis stars in “The Woman King”, and this interview is all about female (physical) strength and our innate warriors.

I loved Margaret Eby’s essay about embracing tacky, something we should all do more of.

“Tacky is also a way of saying, “That is too much.” It’s a way to say, “Hush.” You’re too loud, too bright, too attention-seeking. You take up too much space. You’re too costume-y. You’re too dramatic. Your excesses are not welcome here. Its antithesis is that old chestnut “flattering,” which, in my experience, applies to any item of clothing that makes you seem smaller than you are, both in personality and in physical size.”

Who doesn’t love a good bookstore which is also a café?

🇩🇪 So viele gute Menschen haben es mir empfohlen, jetzt habe ich es endlich gelesen und geliebt: “Was man von hier sehen kann” von Mariana Leky. Warmherzig, witzig und tragisch. Ich konnte gleichzeitig nicht aufhören und habe versucht so langsam wie möglich zu lesen, damit dieses Buch nie zu ende geht.

Can you handle this cuteness?