The Guardian: Why do women talk so much? You asked Google – here’s the answer

Because of the prohibition on women’s speech, which continued right through the middle ages and up through the mass growth in western female literacy, it took until the 20th century for a more positive, parallel notion to take hold: that women might be biologically better with words. Today scientific study has even found the odd bit of evidence that girls may indeed find it easier to acquire language than boys. But does the idea of women’s super- (and superfluous) loquacity actually hold up to scientific scrutiny? [...]

What’s more, in formal or public situations – business meetings, political debates, TV interviews – men nearly always talk more than women. And that’s also a matter of status, says Cameron – people higher in the pecking order command the floor. That more men hold positions of high office than women explains again why it’s male voices that resonate more loudly and more regularly. [...]

The episode seemed to perfectly exemplify what the linguistic theorist Jennifer Coates has called “the androcentric rule”, whereby the linguistic behaviour of men is seen as normal and the linguistic behaviour of women is seen as deviating from that norm. That most trolls on the internet are, according to a study from Brunel and Goldsmiths University, disenfranchised males with narcissism and face-to-face communication issues makes for an interesting aside. Behind a computer screen, lower-status men still feel more entitled than women to vent at higher-status females.

In some ways it’s no surprise given that Twitter, despite having 55% female users, is a male domain. According to a 2009 study from Harvard Business School, men have, on average, more followers than women, are twice as likely to follow other men, and even women follow more male users. Then there was the survey of Twitter’s most influential political voices with regards to the 2017 election, which caused Yvette Cooper MP to ask why experts such as Laura Kuenssberg, Gaby Hinsliff and the Guardian’s own Anushka Asthana and Heather Stewartand other prominent female journalists had failed to make the cut.

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