Bridging the Gender Communication Gap: Empowering Women in the Workplace

It’s time for your annual review and compensation meeting. You take a deep breath, walk into your supervisor’s office, and an hour later, you come out with an excellent review and a 3 percent pay raise. Your male colleague goes in next. He comes out with a smile and a 7 percent pay bump. Sound familiar?

This scenario is repeated endlessly throughout Corporate America. Regardless of job performance, men often get higher raises, not because they are more competent or better at their jobs, but simply because they know how to ask.

The Gender Communication Divide

“I hear this time and time again,” says Deborah Tannen, PhD, professor of linguistics at Georgetown University and author of the influential book on workplace communication, Talking from 9 to 5. “There is a general feeling among women that you should not put yourself forward. To ask for a raise by saying how good or how important you are can seem like boasting to many women. There is a feeling among women that you shouldn’t have to do that—good work will be rewarded.”

Even Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg, one of the most powerful women in American business, fell into the same gender trap, potentially limiting her pay. In her book, Lean In, she describes how, when Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg offered her the COO position, she told him she would take whatever salary he suggested. Later, her brother-in-law told her that no man would ever accept the first offer.

From Playground to Boardroom

Watch a group of four-year-olds interact on the playground. The girls tend to cluster together, talking, laughing, and playing games in which they each take a turn. Then watch the boys. They usually are running, climbing, and trying to outdo one another, physically or verbally. When the two groups mix, the boys more often than not hold the floor and dominate the conversation.

Gender communication disparities take root at a very young age. By the time we reach the workplace, those tendencies are often fixed. “Communication is so ingrained in who we are; it’s harder to change than other things,” says Tannen.

Studies, including Catalyst’s Women ‘Take Care,’ Men ‘Take Charge,’ have shown significant differences in communication and leadership styles between the genders. In Corporate America, traits attributed to male behavioral and communication styles are generally considered to be problem-solving, dominant, active, achievement-oriented, forceful, ambitious, and confronting conflict directly. The equivalent female traits include being affectionate, appreciative, conflict-avoidant, emotional, friendly, sympathetic, sensitive, warm, supportive, and sometimes whiny.

The Monday Morning Meeting

“Take a typical Monday morning staff meeting,” says Audrey Nelson, PhD, author and corporate trainer on communication strategies. “Getting the floor in a meeting is hard. It takes assertiveness skills to get the floor, and from childhood, men have been trained to do it. Men have no problem jumping into a conversation and giving an opinion. They also know how to keep the floor. As a result, men tend to dominate meetings, often talking three to four times longer than women.”

Nelson explains that women tend to cede the floor to someone more aggressive because they are taught that the greatest value is to be liked. They want approval and affiliation and value relationship building, bonding, and honoring the group dynamic. Men generally don’t value those qualities as highly. They value imparting information, reaching a decision as directly as possible, and, in some cases, being right and being acknowledged for it.

The Double Bind

“This puts a woman in a double bind,” says Nelson. “If she tries to get the floor the way a man does—for example, when someone tries to interrupt her, to hold eye contact with that person and say, ‘I’m not done’—she is considered bold, maybe even a bitch. But if she doesn’t and lets the man take over the conversation, she can be considered a doormat. It is damned if you do, damned if you don’t.”

Meetings are only one of many venues in which communication styles can differ between the sexes. Even in one-on-one communication, the prototypical female style can lead to an erosion of respect and power for a female executive.

Communication Styles and Confidence

For instance, women are more prone to ask questions and have different objectives than men. Men ask questions to gather information. Women do as well, but they also ask questions—and even go so far as to pretend not to know the answer when they actually do—to show interest in what the other person has said in order to cultivate the relationship. By building up someone else’s confidence and the public perception of her expertise, the woman leader is boosting not herself, but her team.

“Communication style tends to come down to having and displaying confidence,” says Tannen. “Women tend to use indirect language to ask people to do something, and this can be seen as a sign of lacking confidence. For example, a female department head may ask a subordinate, ‘Can you do me a favor and make these copies for me?’ She didn’t need to word it that way—making copies was that person’s job. And if the manager’s supervisor heard her ask for the copies in such a way, it can be perceived as an apology and a lack of confidence.”

Closing the Gap

Most companies in the United States are led by men and have a male-dominated culture, which means a male communication style, which is intertwined with a male leadership style. “They cannot be separated,” says Nelson. So once a woman becomes ‘branded’ as weak or lacking confidence, no matter how competent she is at her job, she may be fighting an uphill battle for respect, promotion, and pay.

What’s a woman to do? Should she suddenly begin to interrupt and dominate meetings? Bark out orders to staff? Demand a 15 percent raise?

“The biggest mistake a woman can make is to become a man,” says Nelson. “To walk, talk, and behave like a man. Nobody likes it when somebody does that, women or men. And why would you give up some of the great female skills? We are better listeners, empathetic, better readers of nonverbal cues. Why trash that?”

“The answer is, women—and men—need to adopt a form of workplace androgyny, what we call gender flexing,” Nelson continues. “This means I keep my great feminine skills. I can be caring, nurturing, open to giving an employee time off because her husband left her. But an hour later, when a pushy vendor tries to corner me into the sale of a product I don’t want, I can be assertive, set boundaries, and say no. This allows me a bigger behavior repertoire.”

This means, when it’s time to conduct your weekly meeting, be authentic. There is nothing wrong with beginning with five minutes of chitchat, asking about everyone’s families or weekends to establish rapport. And by all means, go ahead and make sure everyone in the room has a chance to be heard. At the same time, be aware of how others like to communicate and respect that (without letting any one voice dominate). If you have something to say, try not to couch it in language like, “You probably already thought of this, but . . .”

For further reading, consider exploring Catalyst, a leading nonprofit organization dedicated to advancing women in the workplace.