Researchers say that this pattern of female speech often baffles men. Women are also more likely to add qualifiers (“I’m not sure, but…”) and apologies (“I’m sorry to interrupt, but…”). When complimented on her work, a woman is more likely to downplay it, saying she was “lucky.” The fact is, she’s not sorry or lucky. She just has a different way of giving direction.
These verbal tics date back to childhood, when girls learn to play with other girls by collaborating, while boys learn to play with other boys by trying to one-up each other. Boys “pay less attention to females of their own age than to other males,” Georgetown linguistics professor Deborah Tannen wrote in her 1994 book “Talking From 9 to 5.” “And the experience of women at meetings indicates the same is often true for adult men and women.”
For a study published in June 2014 in the Harvard Business Review, co-author Jill Flynn and her partners at the consulting firm Flynn Heath Holt analyzed evaluations of 1,100 female executives, surveyed 270 female managers and interviewed 64 top male and female executives. They consistently found that women didn’t assert themselves in meetings. Indeed, half of the male managers whom they interviewed said that women apologize repeatedly or allow themselves to be interrupted.
Men “need to recognize this,” Ms. Flynn says. “One of the things they can do in meetings is ask us, ‘What do you think?’ And include us.”
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