Women Assertiveness

With the increasing number of women who are working in the society, the differences between gender and their conversational style differences have became much more evident. Thus, this topic has received much attention from researchers. Conversational style is defined as “an everyday facet of speech that categorizes both the social group and the individual” (Whorf, 1949, as cited in Tannen, 1987). It constitutes from how individuals speak, to what meaning is encoded in and can be derived from their speech. Assertiveness is one of the significant elements that contribute to having good communication skill and helps express enthusiasm when interacting with others (Crawford, 1995). The lack of assertiveness has always been associated to be a feminine disposition and thus, women have …show more content…
Males, conversely, were often found to interrupt a conversation and raise their own points when the conversation isn’t going their way (Broadbridge, 2003). They tend to partake in violating interruption – that is, continuing or interruption a conversation with differing view or sarcasm is viewed as dominating a conversation is viewed as a ‘strong’ conversational style (Broadbridge, 2003). In addition, it was found that in mixed sex conversations, points raised by men are often pursued and women simply play the supportive role in such conversations (Broadbridge, 2003). In fact, Tannen (1995) discovered through a mixed gender conversation that although women were the ones who gave most of the suggestions, they were “ignored” and ideas often go unnoticed. However, when men picked up those points and elaborated on them, they were given the credit. This suggests that women, by using a less assertive conversational style can be on the losing end as compared to others who are aggressive in their conversational