Abstract
For the past fifty years, the idea that women speakers “lack authority” has featured prominently in discourse—expert and popular, feminist and anti-feminist—on the causes of, and remedies for, gender inequality in the public sphere. After briefly reviewing some of the most influential forms in which this idea has been expressed since the early 1970s, I argue in this chapter that the problem has been located in the wrong place: there is considerable evidence to support the alternative view that women’s perceived lack of authority is not simply a consequence of their own style of speaking (there is, indeed, no such thing as a distinctive and homogeneous “women’s style”) but is rather produced in the reception of their discourse and in the representation of the female speaker as a social type. I conclude by considering why the ideology of language and gender that presents women speakers as lacking authority has been, and remains, so compelling for women (including many feminist women) themselves.
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Notes
- 1.
See Cameron , Verbal Hygiene.
- 2.
Jones , “Nets and Bridles,” 8.
- 3.
Quoted in Bean , “Gaining a Public Voice,” 26.
- 4.
Post , Etiquette, 51.
- 5.
Rakos , Assertive Behavior.
- 6.
Withers , “Don’t Talk While I’m Interrupting,” 106–9.
- 7.
Lakoff , Language and Woman’s Place.
- 8.
Manning and Haddock , Leadership Skills, 7.
- 9.
Ibid., 15.
- 10.
For criticisms see Cameron, “Verbal Hygiene”; Crawford , Talking Difference; Gervasio and Crawford, “Social Evaluations of Assertiveness.”
- 11.
Karim , “Rada gets women to act like men.”
- 12.
Leanse , “‘Just’ Say No.”
- 13.
Cauterucci , “New Chrome app.”
- 14.
Roy , “Women, don’t be sorry.”
- 15.
On contemporary feminism as a commodity or a “brand,” see Rottenberg , The Rise of Neoliberal Feminism, and Zeisler , We Were Feminists Once.
- 16.
Snyder , “The Abrasiveness Trap.”
- 17.
Gidengil and Everitt , “Talking Tough.”
- 18.
Schumann and Ross , “Why Women Apologize.”
- 19.
Holmes , Women, Men and Politeness.
- 20.
Jane , Misogyny Online.
- 21.
Manne , Down Girl.
- 22.
Beard , Women and Power.
- 23.
Rottenberg, Neoliberal Feminism.
- 24.
Bailes, “Catherine Rottenberg: Neoliberal Feminism.”
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Cameron, D. (2020). Language and the Problem of Women’s Authority. In: Bardazzi, A., Bazzoni, A. (eds) Gender and Authority across Disciplines, Space and Time. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-45160-8_2
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