Gender Speech

Audience - youth parliament hoping to make an impact in relation to gender equality issues.

Title - Will women ever be able to claim a public voice?

Why, in this modern era, are women still frowned upon when speaking in public, trying to 'claim' a public voice? Why has it got to a stage where they have to fight to even 'claim' a public voice? It shouldn't be this way, and if it continues can greatly affect our future in terms of parliament elections - why did our only female prime minister Margaret Thatcher need lessons on talking more like a man? Even she was affected by the opinion that women do not hold the power to establish authority in the public sphere!

Famous scholar Mary Beard once stated that women who try to 'claim' a public voice are treated badly, like 'freakish androgynes'! Can you let this continue? One factor contributing towards this is that women are not valued as highly as men when trying to establish authority because men are 'deep-voiced' with 'connotations of profoundity' causing women to be a 'mute in the public sphere' - all because of the sound of a voice! Why should that matter? Surely what comes out of someone's mouth is more important don't you think? This can lead to women being afraid to speak out in the future, and therefore things may never change - all because of the sound of their voice not being as 'deep-voiced' as men's, therefore without having connotations of authority and profoundity. Are you going to let this continue?

This problem leads to men dominating conversations due to their 'perceived superior status', opinionated by theorists Zimmerman and West; they also state that men generally talk for twice as long as women, holding the authority in a 'report style' explained by Deborah Tannen, where men hold centre stage in a conversation by talking in an anecdote style, showing they realise the power they have and therefore use that to totally block out women in a conversation, using constraints in the process causing unequal encounters where women may be 'shouted down'- this shouldn't be the case. In addition to this, men interrupt women over twice as much as women do so to men. Consequently, women may be nervous when in a position of talking in a conversation with men, as they know that men associate a conversation with a 'competition' explained by Tannen, and therefore maybe quick to shut them down, causing the women to use fillers and non fluency features such as stuttering.

This shows that women when in the company of men may never be able to express their thoughts in a manner they would like, and may then therefore never be able to 'claim' that public voice as they will never gain recognition of being confident when speaking in public. This is shown by Tannen stating that women prefer to speak in private in a rapport style, establishing connections, rather than in a competitive style like men do, as they may feel intimidated by men when speaking such as on the public stage - but why should they feel intimidated?

This could all change if men and women actually understood each other in conversation - in John Grey's book 'Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus' he states that there is a strong miscommunication between men and women, linking to Pamela Fishman's idea that communication regularly fails between men and women; women care more about language than men do, and therefore may be the reason for pauses and non-fluency features, to make sure what they say is correct and comprehensible! Maybe, if a step was made for the sexes to understand each others speech, then it may be the start of a long road to women feeling comfortable when 'claiming' a public voice, and men not to frown upon them in doing so.