The Gender Speaking Gap
Women don't necessarily speak less than men, but manturrepting is real.
ALSO IN THIS POST…
The origins of Black History Month
Latest on WOMEN MONEY POWER, the book
I spent the last week recording the audiobook of WOMEN MONEY POWER and one thing I learned was that I have no desire to become a voice actor. The experience was fascinating and I’m glad I chose to do it. The engineers and studio staff were wonderful, as was the studio’s emotional support dog, Ruth. But my vocal cords are toast.
We recorded for between four and six hours each day—with many takes—averaging three or four chapters. (Mercifully, I took Thursday off.) That means, we averaged about 25,000 words a day. “Get a grip,” I thought as I furiously sucked on a Ricola sweet and sipped honey tea after day one. “Surely that’s not that much more than I speak during an average day.”
Well, a quick, Google search suggests it actually might be. One article from TIME cites a study that concludes that, on average, we utter around 16,000 words a day. So combined with the non-reading words that I spoke last week, I would estimate that I averaged about 30,000. Because I generally work from home, I also think that I probably come in below the 16,000-word average. So yes, 30,000 words is a hell of a lot. Maybe my vocal cords’ complaints are at least somewhat justified.
Of course, my little foray into researching how much we speak necessarily got me curious about the gender speaking gap™. Here’s what the TIME article from 2014—citing research done at Northeastern University—has to say about that:
“[The academics’] results found that the gender who spoke more very much depended on the setting. Women were slightly more likely to engage in casual conversation during a lunch hour but much more likely to engage in long conversations during an academic collaboration. However, men were more likely to dominate conversation when placed in a professional group of six or more people.”
This also reminded me of something I read in Mary Ann Sieghart’s brilliant book, THE AUTHORITY GAP last year. Referencing data collected by an app called Woman Interrupted, which detects when a female voice is interrupted by a male voice, Sieghart writes that women are interrupted 1.43 times a minute in the United States and about 1.67 times a minute in the United Kingdom. In Nigeria and Pakistan, that number rises to a shocking 6.66 times and 7.22 times respectively.
Need an example? Here you go:
But I digress.
The male interruptions that I was subjected to last week while reading out loud, where all gentle and necessary alerts from my fantastic engineer Doug (who, halfway through the prologue, pre-ordered WOMEN MONEY POWER for his mother) telling me that I was mispronouncing the word “legislature” (I was) or saying “1969” when I meant “1996.” Thank you, Doug. You’re a hero.
Understanding Black History Month
Elsewhere last week, I spent some time educating myself on the history of Black History Month (February), which traces its roots to the scholar Carter G. Woodson, who, according to the website of the NAACP, “fervently believed that Black people should be proud of their heritage and all Americans should understand the largely overlooked achievements of Black Americans.”
Woodson was born in 1875. His parents were former slaves and were illiterate. Woodson grew up first working on the family’s farm and then in coal mines of West Virginia to earn money to support his family. In terms of education, we mostly taught himself and only entered high school when he was 20. He graduated after two years.
Woodson worked as a teacher and then graduated with a Bachelor’s degree from Berea College in Kentucky, where he studied literature. He subsequently travelled and worked all over the world, later getting his Master’s from the University of Chicago and then an PhD from Harvard. After W.E.B Du Bois he was only the second Black American ever to do so.
Throughout his life, Woodson harbored a conviction that Black American history had been overlooked and ignored. To rectify this, he knew that he would have to—in the words of the NAACP—“create a separate institutional structure.”
In 1915, he managed to obtain funding from the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History. The following year, Woodson started a scholarly Journal of Negro History. It’s still published to this day under the name Journal of African American History.
In 1926, Woodson launched Negro History Week during the second week of February. It coincided with the birthdays of Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass. That eventually became Black History Month—a month to remember and reflect on Black History.
When I was working on my book, I particularly enjoyed learning about the connection between the civil rights movement and the feminist movement, about intersectionality, and especially about a legal scholar named Pauli Murray who spent her life trying to advance the rights of women and Black people, and who called out injustice.
Today, while the pay gap between women and men remains large and unmoving, the pay gap between Black women and white men is even more gaping.
Here’s how the National Women’s Law Center summarizes this particular economic inequality:
“Among full-time, year-round workers, Black women typically make only 67 cents for every dollar paid to white, non-Hispanic men. This wage gap will typically cost Black women $1,891 per month, $22,692 per year, and $907,680 over a 40-year career. Moreover, the wage gap widens when part-year, and part-time workers are included: using this comparison, a Black woman typically makes 64 cents for every dollar a white, non-Hispanic man makes.
:This jarring gender and racial wage gap persists despite Black women’s sharply increasing educational attainment. One reason for this is that Black women face occupational segregation, meaning they are overrepresented in low-paid jobs. And in every common occupation, whether low-paid or not, Black women face racist and sexist wage gaps compared to their white, non-Hispanic male counterparts.
“In addition, Black women experience a gender wage gap compared to Black men: among full-time, year-round workers, Black women typically make just 93 cents for every dollar paid to Black men.”
Black women are also far more likely than white women to experience medical paternalism and Black women have the highest maternal mortality rate in the country. In 2021, it stood at 69.9 per 100,000 live births which is almost three times the rate for white women, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
When we talk about gender gaps—be those pay gaps, health gaps, authority gaps or any other gaps—we’re frequently treating women as a monolith. But the lived experiences of women vary vastly. I’m guilty of falling into this generalization trap, so this Black History Month, that’s something that I’m going to be reflecting on.
WOMEN MONEY POWER: The Book
A slightly shorter send today (I’m down with the flu!) but as usual, a quick update on all things book.
Publication day is a month away. Have you pre-ordered yet? Do so here!
On March 4, the evening before publication day, I’ll be reading from WOMEN MONEY POWER at the lovely Corner Bookstore on Manhattan’s Upper East Side. Drop me a note if you plan to attend. I’d love to see you there!
Here’s a link to the Columbia Magazine interview about WOMEN MONEY POWER in their Winter 2023-2024 edition.
I’ll also be in London in April. I’ll be doing a public reading on the evening of Monday April 8, somewhere in central London. Location and time TBC, but save the date!
