Slason 1

Erin Slason

Heather Peterson

First Year Composition

1 December 2017

Synthesis Essay Rough Draft

Are women heard when publicly speaking? Historically, women have not been allowed

space to speak in public, and this continues to be true today. In Mary Beards 2014 article,

published in London Review Books, The Public Voice of Women, Beard expresses that women

have been looked down on by men ever since Ancient Greece and Rome. Beard studied the

reception of womens speech in public throughout Western history until now is the same. Beard

studied at the University of Cambridge in Cambridge, England and throughout her career in

college, she went to an all-girl school, but she came across men who believed woman did not

have much say and do not deserve an education and met many feminists. Francesca Polletta, the

2013 author of Gender and Public Talk: Accounting for Womens Variable Participation in the

Public Sphere is a professor of sociology at Columbia University and the University of

California, Irvine. She explains how men and women should have equal roles in society but do

not. Men have always been higher up in the hierarchy than women, and explains the harm of

gender shaming and what it is doing to our society. And finally, Judith Baxter the 2006 author of

Speaking Out: The Female Voice in Public Contexts is a British sociologist and a professor of

Applied Linguistics at Aston University where she specializes in Gender and Language, and

Leadership Language. Throughout the novel, Baxter talks about how womens voices are

considered third wave language. Womens voices are silenced when it comes to men being

their audiences, and that women have only been married to their husbands to be their objects.
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Women are given less opportunities in public speaking because of their genders and their roles in

society.

Ever since ancient times, a womans right to do anything was nonexistent, especially

when it comes to public speaking. Even since ancient times women have not been heard. Beard

mentions, I want to start very near the beginning of the tradition of Western literature, and its

first recorded example of a man telling a woman to shut up; telling her that her voice was not to

be heard in public (Beard, 2014). It is not a new problem with society, it has been an issue since

Ancient times. Beard explains telemachus outburst was just the first example in a long line of

largely successful attempts stretching throughout Greek and Roman antiquity, not only to

exclude women from public speech but also to parade that exclusion (Beard, 2014). Even in

Ancient Greece and Rome, women had no right in public speaking and that is how it is now. In

order for a woman to even be considered noticed, they pay large amounts of money. Beard

stated, but if we want to understand and do something about the fact that women, even when

they are not silenced, still have to pay a very high price for being heard, we have Women are not

heard no matter how much they try. Not only does society treat women terribly when it comes to

public speaking, but when it comes to everyday things, they get mistreated. Beard also mentions,

women are allowed to speak out as victims and as martyrs usually to preface their own death

(Beard, 2014). Women are only allowed to speak publicly if it is affecting them. They also have

the right to speak when there is a reason to speak. Beard mentions, occasionally women could

legitimately rise up to speak to defend their homes, their children, their husbands or the

interests of other women (Beard, 2014). The only time it is socially acceptable to publicly speak

is if they are defending themselves, their family, or something they own.

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Francesca Polletta, the 2013 author of Gender and Public Talk: Accounting for

Womens Variable Participation in the Public Sphere talks about how women are publicly

shamed because of their genders and their roles in society. Polletta includes, by default, most

sites of public political talk are masculine. However, some of the discourses that are used to talk

about public life are anchored in feminized institutions such as social work and psychotherapy

(Polletta 292). In order for a woman to speak in any social place, they have to either be high up

in the hierarchy or work in a field that requires them to speak. Society categorizes public

speaking with masculinity because it is easier for them to be heard. Polletta includes, studies

show, variously, that men speak (or write) more often, speak for longer turns, interrupt more, are

more hostile in tone, are more likely to be responded to, are more likely to be responded to

respectfully, and are more likely to respond to women in a challenging way (Polletta 294). Men

have that competitive trait that gives them more power when it comes to speaking or writing. It is

easier for men to be heard because of their tone of voice and how they come about speaking. Not

only are women discouraged when it comes to public speaking, but in general they are treated

less human because of their gender. Polletta includes, we draw accordingly on research that has

focused on the gendering, specifically, of occupations, and on the consequences of changes in

occupations gender composition. But the consequences we are interested in are not equal in pay

or mobility, but rather equality in talk. Accordingly, we emphasize the importance not only of

the gender composition of the occupations sponsoring and organizing public talk, but also of the

gendered norms of talk that are promoted (Polletta 295). Women should not have to fight to be

heard or to fight to publicly speak.

Judith Baxter the 2006 author of Speaking Out: The Female Voice in Public Contexts,

she talks about how to this day womens voices are silenced when it comes to men. Baxter
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mentions, although the problematic status of womens public speech is not exclusively a

modern or western phenomenon, the phrase the female voice in public contexts has a specific

meaning in the context of western modernity, where the binary oppositions male/female and

public/private are both salient principles of social organization (Baxter 4). Though the

male/female voice is important, womens voices are considered less important because of the

way their voices sound and the way they present their voice. Baxter includes, speakers make

use of this paradigm to construct the female voice as irrational and authoritative, thus

undermining a female speaker and her message (Baxter 3). Because a womans voice comes off

annoying, people do not want to listen to them speak. Finally, Baxter also includes, Jones

points out that this injunction to women to be silent marked a shift in mainstream ideals of

gender, championed first by middle-class puritans in opposition to what they regarded as the

decadence of the aristocracy (Baxter 5). Womens voices have been ignored ever since Western

literature, and still is an issue.

Womens roles in society are still the same as they were in Ancient Greece and Rome. In

order for a woman to publicly speak, they have to try hard to be heard. Beard states that women's

roles in society are looked passed because of their gender. What a woman says means nothing

because it is coming from a female and a female voice is blocked out automatically. Beard

mentions, but its a nice demonstration that right where written evidence for Western culture

starts, womens voices are not being heard in the public sphere; more than that, as Homer has it,

an integral part of growing up, as a man, is learning to take control of public utterance and to

silence the female of the species (Beard, 2014). Not only were women silenced in the public

sphere, but even being in a household, the women were still silenced and men acted like the

women were not there. People do not respect a woman when they are speaking and they are
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looked down on because of past times. Men were raised to take control and to speak for women

and it has stayed that way.

Women have not been allowed space to speak in public, and it continues today. Women

have to try very hard to be heard just a little and that is not how society should work. Just

because a womens voice is different from mens voices, does not give society the right to

disregard what women are saying and how they come about speaking in public. We have

freedom of speech and women should be allowed to speak what is on their minds. It matters for

womens voices to be heard because what they have to say can be relevant to what is going on in

todays society. People did not fight for our freedom, just for womens rights to be shot down.
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Works Citied

Baxter, Judith. Speaking out: the female voice in public contexts. Palgrave Macmillan, 2006.

Beard, Mary. "The Public Voice of Women." London Review of Books (2014): 11-14-17

Nov. 2017

Chang, C. H. (2009). Handbook of Sports Psychology. New York: Nova Science

Publishers, Inc.