ABSTRACT
A few women were talking together after hearing a public lecture on common beliefs about the ways women and men talk. A young woman said she thought it was ‘nice’ that many people realized and appreciated that women talk differently, often smoothing things over and making people feel better. An older woman responded something like this:
‘It’s nice? Well, I don’t know. If women are supposed to take care of making everyone easy in social situations, how come we’re not given tax breaks for cars and gasoline to scoot around helping people out? And how come we’re not given training in microphone use, and special classes to help us take care of crowds? What about giving us special phones with cross-country networks connections so we can keep in touch and know who needs help and where? How are we supposed to exercise these ‘nice’ social skills we’re supposed to have without some help here? How come we’re not given control of those communications satellites up there so we’d have the necessary equipment to help keep everyone talking with each other?’
