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Does anyone even talk at all anymore?
How gender stereotypes shape the way we think about conversation.
I’ve always been told that women talk more than men.
It’s a stereotype so ingrained that even as a kid, I never questioned it. But as I got older, I started noticing something strange — men interrupted me more. They repeated what I had just said but louder.
They explained things to me that I already knew. It made me wonder: do women really talk more, or do people just notice it more when we do?
As a young sociologist, I would study this question using both qualitative and quantitative research. I’d start with in-depth interviews, asking men and women how often they feel interrupted or dismissed in conversations. Do they notice a difference in how they are perceived when they speak?
Then, I’d conduct direct observations and analyze speech patterns in different settings — classrooms, workplaces, and casual social environments — to measure actual speaking time by gender.
The existing research already challenges the stereotype. Studies show that men tend to dominate conversations in professional and political spaces.
