Men need to start listening
We live in a world dominated, unfortunately, by men who don’t listen to women.
Men’s propensity for disregarding the things that women have to say by not taking the time to value the information their female counterparts are contributing to a discussion is a problem in every form of communication and needs to be addressed.
A study from Linkedin shows that in sales conversation when men sell a product to women they speak 69% more of the time than the women they are selling to. Alternatively, when women sell a product they speak 48% of the time while the men they are selling to speak 52% of the time.
As further evidence to help show men’s proclivity for potentially speaking over women they’re speaking to, when men attempted to sell to men the ratio was nearly equal. The salesman spoke 44% of the time while the man being sold to spoke 56% of the time.
It is a privilege as a man to speak and be listened to. Women aren’t as lucky.
This study also looked at the concept of “mansplaining.”
“We measured the average monologues — how long a person speaks for an uninterrupted period of time — by gender combination. When men sold to other men in this dataset, their average monologue was 91 seconds long. When men sold to women, it was 108 seconds long — a full 17 seconds longer on average,” the study showed.
In an article from The New York Times wherein women were asked to share their experience with men speaking over them or interrupting them, one woman shared a story about her female boss knowing how many times to let male employees interrupt her in a conversation so as not to have any further problems.
Society for a long time has dictated that men are in charge. This is no longer the case, but because this rhetoric has been so ingrained in society for so long it’s a hard change to make.
Women, I know struggle with being heard by male friends, co-workers and professors. It’s men’s fault that this inequality exists between the sexes, so it is their job to correct it.
Frankly, listening is easy. Yet, in group studies research has found that men are 75% more likely to speak up than women are.
Diversity, in all forms, is a beautiful thing. Being introduced to all different examples of human experience is something that can make us all more informed and more understanding.
Women bring just as valid ideas to the table as men do, they provide an experience that men have no comprehension of and can use that experience to empathize with situations more clearly. The only thing standing in women’s way of being heard is men.
Simply taking the time to hear what people are saying is an easy courtesy to extend. Taking the information provided to you and allowing it to help form a more well-informed opinion is a tool to bettering ourselves as people that needs to be utilized.
