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Do Women Talk too much?
The belief that women talk more than men has been around for so many years. Gender stereotypes place men and women in different categories instead of categorizing them as individual people with the desire to share their dreams, wants, and desires. Other stereotypical ideas about how women and men communicate include: communication is more important to women than it is to men; women communicate to build relationships, but men communicate to inform; women communicate with the aim of building emotional connections, men communicate to get things done, etc. so is the statement that women talk more than men a fact, or do men talk more than women in some situations? This paper analyzes the popular belief that women talk more than men, and it argues that men tend to talk more in situations where talk is perceived to be valuable.
According to Holmes, men tend to be more talkative in culturally valuable situations. Culturally valuable situations include public and formal contexts where persuasive and informative talk is considered valuable, and talking is the privilege of those in high statuses, such as in political and other public contexts. Even when both men and women hold influential positions, it is the men that do much of the talking. The idea that women talk too much is a cultural construction that reflects prejudice against the female gender. These cultural representations suggest that women only use talk to build emotional attachments, build relationships, enhance cooperation, talk about their feelings, or to talk about other people. These notions are biased and meant to portray women as being weak. These prejudices against women are what the “Gender and Cultural Studies” reading also addresses. During first wave feminism, for instance, women had no rights to property, and their husbands could imprison them as they wanted. Women who divorced their husbands could also not get any assistance from the legal systems (p. 1). Strong women at the time openly challenged the patriarchal systems that suppressed them. Similarly, the notion that women are more talkative is perceived to be a cultural construction that is aimed at belittling women, and Janet Holmes argues against this notion.
The focus of this essay was to analyze the popular notion that women are more talkative than men. As explained above, talkativeness is not determined by one’s gender, but rather by one’s status. Even in situations where men and women hold influential positions in society, men tend to speak more. The idea that women talk too much is a cultural construction that reflects prejudice against the female gender, just like women were denied property rights and other privileges in the old days.
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