Published: Thursday, 29th January, 2009 7:00am

Women edit speech more - uni

by Annabel Williams

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RESEARCH at Reading University has shown women leaders are more likely to censor the language they use at work to avoid being judged.

Students interviewed 10 senior female and 10 senior male leaders from FTSE 500 companies about how they speak to colleagues.

They found that women consciously police what they say so they neither sound too feminine, and therefore weak, nor too masculine, and therefore assertive.

Applied linguistics lecturer, Dr Judith Baxter, says in a paper published this month in the Journal Of Gender And Language, that both male and female business leaders are equally able to switch between assertive masculine styles and co-operative feminine styles of speaking but women do it more often.

Dr Baxter said: "The evidence points to female leaders having to expend considerably more energy than males in regulating the way they speak, which potentially adds a significant pressure to the business of being an effective leader.

"Women are involved in additional conversational work to counter the effects of being typecast as irrational females.

"While their developed linguistic skills can be very useful tools, the efforts required in exhibiting these skills is also potentially stressful, time-consuming and undermining for the self.

"In modern times, male managers are celebrated for their use of a more co-operative discourse.

"However, women are often castigated for the appropriation of more authoritative forms of discourse when required and they constantly have to pay attention to the other's point of view.

"Women will remain under-represented in leadership positions unless there is a major cultural shift in attitudes towards language.

"The corporate world needs to evaluate senior women's linguistic behaviour much more positively.

"Currently for women, the effective use of language requires social, emotional and intellectual intelligence as well as huge amounts of hard work.

"This can enable a number of them to move from good to great but for others, it may be too great a price to pay for professional success."

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