Summarizing Holmes Essay Sample

According to Holmes, majority of available evidences suggest that the common belief about women talking more than men is not correct but men talk more when men and women are together. Two Canadian researchers reviewed 63 studies that examined the amount of talk by American men and women in different contexts. Only two studies showed that women talked more than men. Research conducted in New Zealand also confirmed this view.
Holmes analyzed questions that participants asked in 100 public seminars. She found out that men dominated more during the discussion time in 93 seminars and only in 7 seminars, women spoke more. She confirmed that men were asking nearly two-thirds of the questions in seminars, when the number of men and women present were equal. Evidence collected from committee meetings, seminars, staff meetings, etc. in the United States, United Kingdom, and New Zealand also corroborate that men dominate in talking time.
Several researchers have compared the contribution of boys and girls in classroom talks and have established that males dominate in all classroom talks, from kindergarten to tertiary education.
Women talk more only in relaxed social environments and men talk more even in informal or intimate situations. Miriam Meyerhoff established that women talked more when they were explicitly sought to talk more. Women also talked more when they were experts or highly familiar with the subject of discussion. Hence, Holmes concludes that the answer to the question whether women talk more is ‘It all depends’, depending on several factors like social context, type of talk involved, social confidence of speakers, and familiarity with the topic.