Well, I'm not sure what's wrong with me, but apparently something is wrong. The reason I say that is because when I listen to speakers talk, I listen to the message. It makes no difference to me whether they are a male of a female. Maybe because I'm older and look at the world differently than most others. I listen to what people are saying and not how they are saying it. Especially this time of year with all the politics and the adds. What and how people say things can be deceiving. One of the big issues in politics these days revolves around the woman's vote. So, how else can you reach out to woman? Put them in political adds. With this, it's even more important to listen and think and even read about the issues. Women can be used to make the simple minded people think that what they are saying must be important to women because a woman is saying it. It makes it very easy to use women to manipulate voters.
Regarding the issues of gender and delivery in the book, I don't think that pitch and volume are an issue with women. Maybe because when I listen to women, they are usually talking into a microphone and on TV. The only way other way I can apply those situations would be to those who speak in class. I have not seen much of a pitch or volume problem but maybe because it's a small room.
Earlier in the article, it explains that woman are judged on what they wear where a man would be given a higher status just because he's a man. I cant disagree with this more. Even though it does say "much has changed over the years", I can never remember a time that I felt that way.
F.D.
I agree with you because it doesn't matter who speaker is man or woman, the most important what they are talking about. I was interesting about "gender anxiety" and I found one research about it. Anxiety is the apprehension given off by a threat to some value that the individual holds important to his or her existence as a person (Engler, 1999). Many feel anxious when they are motivated to impress others but doubt their ability to do so. Significant gender differences exist among many measures including academic stress, time management, and anxiety (Misra & McKean, 2000). The experiment conducted consisted of 101 subjects from General and Intermediate Psychology Courses at Missouri Western State College in St. Joseph, Missouri. The purpose of the experiment was to see if females have greater amount of anxiety when giving a public speaking presentation than males. Participants were asked to answer a seven-item questionnaire rating their levels of anxiety in specific situations. A 2 X 2 between subjects factorial ANOVA was calculated comparing the anxiety scores for females giving a speech in front of an all female or male audience and also the males scores when giving a speech in front of an all female or male audience. The hypothesis was not supported that females would have a higher amount of anxiety than males. The main effect for the gender of the audience and the main effect for whether or not the gender of the subject mattered were both not significant. The interactions between the two were also not significant. It appears that the anxiety level is not any higher in males or females when in a situation of giving a speech to an all male or female audience.
ReplyDeleteI am glad to hear that "something is wrong" with you and that you listen to the actual content of things that are being said to you instead of how they are being said. If only more people in our society were that way. I was glad that you brought up the issue of political advertisements and the ways that they manipulate people, specifically women in your example. Political advertisement are among the most manipulative and deceptive ads out there. I also find myself often looking at why they chose a specific person to deliver the message in their ad or why they chose to say things a certain way or show certain images. Sometimes I even find myself opposing the issue that a political advertisement is promoting not because of the stance of the politician or content of the proposition, but because I am offended and upset by how the advertisement has tried to deceive me.
ReplyDeleteWhat we are suppose to listen to each other speak? Someone should have told me.
ReplyDeleteIn all seriousness though, I do think that gender and bias may be toned down in a scholastic setting, especially the higher you go. Topics usually become more about the content and not so personal. It isn't until you go into such a high level and start applying what you learn to the outside world that bias comes back in. If you look at our class for example, most of us are just trying to pass the class. We are giving generic speeches, which are typically gender neutral. We are treading lightly so that we don't get a bad grade. We will not apply anything, beyond the skills we use to the real world. In other words, our speeches are pretty artificial.
However, this could become an issue if you were giving a presentation on economics and welfare.