About this idea that women are attention-hogs while men modestly stand aside and let us blather – Deborah Tannen has written about this misperception:

I do say, in my just-published book about women’s friendships, that women friends, as compared to men, tend to talk more — more often, at greater length and about more personal topics. But that’s private speaking — conversations that negotiate and strengthen personal relationships. Research, my own and others’, has also shown that men tend to talk far more than women in what might be called public speaking — formal business-focused contexts, like meetings. In a now-classic study, Barbara and Gene Eakins recorded seven university faculty meetings.

They found that, with one exception, the men at the meeting spoke more often and, without exception, spoke longer. The longest comment by a woman at all seven gatherings was shorter than the shortest comment by a man. Susan Herring found a similar pattern in online discussions among linguists on professional topics: Messages written by men were, on average, twice as long as those written by women.

One reason women tend to speak less at meetings, in my view, is that they don’t want to come across as talking too much. It’s a verbal analogue to taking up physical space. When choosing a seat at a theater or on a plane, most of us will take a seat next to a woman, if we can, because we know from experience that women are more likely to draw their legs and arms in, less likely to claim the arm rest or splay out their legs, so their elbows and knees invade a neighbor’s space.

While way too many men are all too comfortable doing exactly that.

For similar reasons, when they talk in a formal setting, many women try to take up less verbal space by being more succinct, speaking in a lower voice and speaking in a more tentative way. Women in my classes at Georgetown University have told me that if they talk a lot in class one week, they will intentionally keep silent the next. Psychologist Elizabeth Aries observed a similar pattern in comparing the participation of women and men in college discussion groups. Even Margaret Mead, according to her daughter Mary Catherine Bateson, judiciously chose the issues on which she would speak up, so as not to come across as dominating.

It’s a great lose/lose, isn’t it. Women talk less but get accused of talking more – they lose the benefits of talking more but still get blamed for hogging the discussion. Oh well; suck it up bitches.