Conversational behaviour between the sexes

Program Title: WINGS #16-16 Who Talks, Who Listens?
Description: From the WINGS archives, excerpts from an often hilarious 1989 talk at New College in San Francisco by feminist linguist Dr. Dale Spender, based on her research in the UK and Australia into the conversational differences between women and men, and the hostile reactions of men and boys when attention is focused on women and girls rather than on themselves. Among her findings was that when a woman speak more than 25-30 percent of the time in a conversation with a man, she is perceived as overbearing and dominating the conversation.

Host(s):
Featured Speakers/Guests: Dale Spender's doctorate in linguistics at the University of London became the 1980 book Man Made Language. Her other books include, among others: The Diary of Elizabeth Pepys; Invisible Women: The Schooling Scandal; The Writing or the Sex?, Or, Why You Don't Have to Read Women's Writing to Know It's No Good; Time and Tide Wait for No Man; and Women of Ideas and What Men Have Done To Them.

Credits: Produced by Frieda Werden

Comments: First version released in 1989, under the title Why We Need All-Woman Spaces, which was the title of Spender's original talk.