May 8, 2020 • 27 mins
Are there gender differences in hearing and hearing loss? What about in how we listen and who we listen to? Yes and yes. Give this episode a listen to learn more.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
Hey, this is Annie Oh Sava, and welcome to stuff
I've never told your protection of I heart Radio. Today
we are tackling a topic that is a personal one
for me, as you know, Samantha, because we've discussed it
(00:26):
a lot. Due to an injury when I was in
middle school, I lost a decent amount of hearing capability
in my right ear, and it has impacted so much
of my life. The way I walk, where I sit,
the processing time it takes for me to understand. I
(00:47):
feel like I'm having to do a lot of mental work,
the panic when talking on the phone if I can't
see your face. Oh, the way that I sleep because
I sleep on my right ear so I can hear
if something is happening with my left ear. Um. And
I recognize that I'm very, very privileged to have the
hearing that I do. But I would be lying if
I said that it wasn't a source of a lot
(01:09):
of anxiety for me, especially because we are in an
audio media our job, it's all about hearing and listening
and us. Of course, now that we're coming to you
from our I call my studio studio quarantine, my closet
studio um. That means a lot more phone interviews and
(01:30):
or skype interviews, so it's been on my mind. Um,
and I did get this injury in a pretty dramatic way.
So it's just this reminder every day. Uh, and sometimes
it is very triggering, and I have I've only just
started opening up about it because people at work started
(01:50):
noticing habits that I had that I would always sit
on one side of the table. I would sit on
one side of the boom. Um. And then I had
to confess us that I phone interviews made me really
really anxious on this show because people would sort of
be like, I feel like you never talking that much
during those episodes of listeners right in and I I
(02:13):
would say, I'm probably trying very very hard to catch
up with what they just said and to process that
information and then have a comment. And by the time
I've done that, the conversations moved on or something. Yeah, um,
I remember when you first told me. I just assumed
it was the professionalism of like waiting and pausing just
(02:36):
in case they wanted to add things. So to me,
I was like, oh, oh, okay, yeah, that makes sense.
And as a person that doesn't struggle with that, I
could absolutely understand. I'm like, oh, that makes a lot
more sense to your reaction time, to your habits in general.
I'm like, yeah, I actually had my h earlier school.
I don't know what it's called. Schools of days that
(02:57):
wasn't college. What are those? I'm very education sure, okay,
I know words. Um. During that time, like my best
friend's little sister had also had damage on one side
of her ear through illness, and so she was deaf
in one ear, and I remember having to understand, oh,
that's why she's not paying attention, and when I'm trying
(03:17):
to talk to her on the side of her it's
not just because she's not listening to me, which I'm
sure has been an issue with yours your stuff as well,
when you're like, no, I'm not being awkward, No I'm
not ignoring you. I just literally did not hear you
because you're on the wrong side of my body. Yeah.
And sometimes I catch myself doing what I feel like
(03:41):
is I think I feel like dogs do this where
they sort of cock their head. So sometimes if it
the room has been silent for a while, I just
kind of turned my head and cock it to make
sure there isn't a sound that I'm not picking up
on that I should be picking up on UM. And
I even had somebody tell me that UM is for
a movie I was in. He said I almost didn't
(04:01):
get the job because of how awkward I was on
the phone, and he felt he felt terrible when I
told him my struggles with the phone. Yeah yeah, yeah,
But I mean that was in a way both very
upseting and very comforting to know it's not just in
my head. There is a blettle of awkwardness happening here. Well.
(04:24):
To be fair, I am really awkward on the phone
as well. I'll rush you off a conversation real quick
because I hate being on the phone anyway. And I
does don't like just pausing and just be like, what
are you? Are you saying that? Me? You? Me? You
like that whole level, So that could be so for sure,
(04:46):
I don't. I only have like three friends and a
few family members that like talking on the phone. It's
just it doesn't seem like it's a really popular thing,
and no one likes it. After you can figure out
you don't actually have to be on the phone anymore
to come memunicates, I'm like, oh, let's do this other
way instead. I'm not gonna lie though, because whole like
face to face thing is also shocking new level of shocking. Yes, yes,
(05:09):
I much prefer that, uh but yeah, yeah, for sure.
Um So in this episode, we're going to look at
some specific aspects of hearing when it comes to women
and listening when it comes to women, and other intersections
of that. But honestly, this is a huge There are
(05:30):
so many lanes we could have gone down. Well, yeah,
just by the definition of hearing and listening, you could
go into the figurative, you could go into the water
roll and and it is the whole several topic worth
absolutely and we definitely have touched on some of those
topics in previous episodes and we'll be sure to shout
those out as we go along. But okay, let's let's
(05:52):
get into the meat the meat. Yeah, So when it
comes to listening, as with a lot of things, we
talked about a whole lot of fact just play a role, culture, gender, race, socialization,
relationships topics, and many more. Yes, And for Samantha and
I in particular, we've definitely had a handful of episodes
(06:15):
where we've talked about how we judge women's voices more
harshly when it comes to things like up talk and
vocal fry, the credibility gap. Um, So those are out
there as well, and it is it does play a
role in what we're talking about, but we're not going
to hone in specifically on those things too much today.
So hearing in terms of science of hearing or of
(06:36):
physical hearing, there's a lot out there. Most of the
studies seem to suggest that women generally have more hearing
sensitivity and greater susceptibility to high frequency noise exposure, among
other things, while men have greater sound localization again, among
other things. Yeah, I had to look up so many
terms when reading these research papers to understand what was
(07:00):
going on. So let's talk about hearing loss for a second.
Over fifty million Americans experience hearing loss. The National Institute
on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders found that men are
twice as likely to experience hearing loss and much less
likely to seek help for it. Men tend to lose
higher frequencies first, while women lose lower frequencies first, according
(07:22):
to the Hearing Aid Project, That means women's ability to
hear vowels is more impacted, while men's ability to hear
consonants is more impacted, which can foster a lot of miscommunication.
Women with hearing laws are more likely to use verbal
and maladaptive strategies, things like interrupting people, informing people about
what they're hearing laws, all that rights, and from what
(07:45):
I could ascertain from the study, men are more likely
to just sort of shrug it off. Right. Yeah, but
let's talk about listening to women. So we have a
long story history of fictional women warning of danger to come.
We know this at example, maybe Cassadra warning the Greeks
(08:06):
of the Trojan Horse comes to mind, um, and not
being listened to. We have so many examples of this
in our media that my co host over at Savor,
Lauren and I did a whole episode on this show
um when it comes to the context of horror movies,
called why Didn't You Believe Her? And then we tied
it into the whole Brett Kabin of thing. So, if
(08:27):
you are looking for more examples, so many, so many examples.
A study so little dated found that when presenting if
ho on a traditionally masculine topic, a traditionally feminine topic,
and a neutral topic, people listened more carefully to the
male speakers even when the presentation was the same. In
(08:48):
all of the presentations, even the traditionally feminine topic, there
wasn't a difference and who was more informative the male
or female presenters are the participants rating of who is
more informative of When it came to effectiveness, steady participants
generally rated the male presenter with the same level of effectiveness,
but the male respondents gave higher ratings to the female
(09:11):
presenters than the women in the study did, and the
theory was that men the male participants did not expect
the female presenters to be competent, so when they were,
they rated them higher than they did the men. This
is directly out of the study, it says, as one
basis for this differential evaluation. Burger, Cohen and Zeldag and
(09:32):
Lockheed in Hall have suggested that difference in the evaluation
of behavior of males and females are directly related to
the effect of sex as a status characteristics. Since the
male sex is more highly valued and thus is accorded
higher status, Assessments of male behaviors are also valued more
even when compared to equally effective behavior performed by a female.
(09:53):
A possible consequence of these perceived differences is that if
women are perceived as being less competent, this might influence
the ability to exert influence and impair their credibility rights.
A two thousand study used brain scans to determine that
men listen with one side of their brain, while women
listen with both. This doesn't mean that women are better listeners, though,
(10:15):
and the researchers cautioned that they couldn't untangle whether this
was because of hardwiring in the brain or social conditioning.
So other research on the brain hash down that even
at a young age, boys and girls process language differently,
more sensory for boys and abstract for girls. Scientists are
still looking into whether these differences disappear in adulthood. So
(10:40):
we got a lot of things going on there. We
got a lot of threads of social conditioning and culture
than we have science showing something in the brain is
going on. Um, And it is difficult to unpack all
of that stuff when it comes to why, alps we
(11:01):
do listen to women differently? Are there are these sex
differences and why and how we listen? Um? And that's
that's only a handful of the studies. We have some more,
but first we have a quick break for a word
from our sponsor, and we're back. Thank you sponsor. So
(11:32):
a few years ago, Carol Kinzie Goman researched gender differences
and communication skills and workplace environments across the United States, Canada,
and Europe. Respondents generally gave the same mish answers for
strengths and weaknesses in themselves and each other. So, for women,
the strengths generally given were ability to read body language
(11:54):
and pick up nonverbal cues, good listening skills, effective display
of empathy, and the weakness is given were overly emotional, meandering,
won't get to the point, not authoritative right. So for men,
the strengths were commanding physical presence direct into the point interactions,
affective display of power, and the weaknesses were overly blunt
(12:17):
and direct, insensitive to audience reactions, and too confident in
own opinion. So those are some pretty big differences, and
a lot of them do fall along stereotypical gender lines
gender performative lines. The study broke down communication styles into warmth,
so things like caring, likability, empathy, and authority, credibility, status
(12:41):
and power. According to the findings women are better at
the warmth part and men at the authority part. And
I was thinking about this, Maybe better isn't the right word.
It could be that due to socialization and historical power structures,
that's where women were allowed to excel and that's where
men were allowed to excel. Again, it's really hard to
(13:05):
to unpack untangle all of this. Anyway, The study found
that women are better at collaborative environments at dialogue, while
men are better at the monologue. Here's a quote from
the study um which was reported on at Forbes. Women
display more warm body language cues. They are more likely
(13:27):
to focus on those who are speaking by orienting head
and torso to face participants. They leaned forward, smiles, synchronize
their movements with others, not until their heads the universal
signal of listening literally giving someone your ear. Men said
more status signals through an array of dominant behaviors such
as side to side, headshaking, anger, and discussed expressions. They
(13:48):
stand tall, are they sprawl sitting with their legs spread,
are widely crossed, their materials spread out on a conference table,
and their arms stretched out on the back of a chair.
M So this article went on to catalog the general
differences in body language between men and women. For men,
not in usually means I agree, whereas for women it
(14:08):
can mean either I agree, or I'm listening to you,
or as an encouragement to the speaker to keep going.
It also found that men talk more in meetings than women. Surprise, Yeah, well,
and I was thinking about that too, because I find
it interesting that in our mainstream stereotype of women, it's
it's like they talk more than men. You've got your
(14:30):
chatty Cathy's I can't get them to stop, and oh no,
she's on the phone. It's all over. I know. My
mom was a frequent target of these kinds of comments,
and when I got older and I would talk to
her about that, oftentimes it's she wanted the conversation to end,
(14:52):
but did Usually dude in the picture was just overstand,
like I have five ambles, I think, and was just
talking away at her. And yet she was the one
who's getting made fun of, and not that we should
be making fun of people who want to talk, but
she was the one that was getting picked on for
(15:14):
being chatty, even though she probably just like yeah, yes,
encouraging exactly. Um and research does not bear out that
women are the big talkers at all. Some researchers found
that in most situations, men dominate seventy of speaking time.
Women are more likely to be interrupted than men on
(15:36):
a number which goes up when more men are present.
But research has also found that even though women are
speaking last, people perceive that they speak more than they do.
So I feel like this is another way to minimize women,
To encourage women to stay quiet, because otherwise you're talking
too much and people are gonna laugh at you. Now again,
(15:59):
this this is a very complex thing that we're talking
about with a lot going on. These are generalizations. Um,
always more researchers need, more sciences needed. Uh. I will
say women, and we've talked about this before, they do
typically have more social relationships, So I can understand perhaps
(16:22):
where that stereotype came from in terms of women just
have more people to talk to generally. Um, but yeah,
and I'm probably most likely to reach out. Yes, Yes,
So a lot of advice out there in the business
realm to be more sort of lean in, put the
responsibility on women to adapt to masculalized environment and that bossy,
(16:45):
bitchy fallback is waiting right there in the wings to
come on out right. So the advice feels like it's
telling women to be more like men. But then when
you do that, then you're called these terms. You're not
doing this enough, but when you do it, you're doing
too much exactly. And also it is sort of implying
(17:12):
that this masculine environment is the right one and that
women should change to fit into that instead of maybe
we should all be listening more right, Yes, yes, and
we do have some some more tips around that. But
first we have one more quick break for word from
(17:32):
our sponsor and we're back, Thank you, sponsor. So I
was reading an article in the New York Times when
(17:52):
researching this are, written by Dr pabolis Um, and in
it she wrote about what she called feminist listening, which
I thought was an interesting term, and she described women,
particularly white women, not engaging in feminist listening when women,
for example, we're warning of Trump's sexist, racist, abusive behavior.
(18:14):
All right, And of course everything we've talked about could
further be broken down to the intersectional issues. How do
we listen or not to women of color, to non
binary pos, to the l g b t Q plus individuals,
And we do have a lot of stereotypes that hang
ups around voices, which is something we've talked about and
again needs to be probably a bigger episode in itself
(18:35):
to revisit. Yes, absolutely. If you google feminist listening, by
the way, most of the top results are either listen
to women, Okay, something about reframing how we construct studies.
I actually found this really fascinating. So they in this
particular study I'm thinking of, they were describing how we
(18:58):
need to change how we listen to participants in studies, UM,
examining gaps in research and why those gaps exist. And
then um, words that don't exist. We need to think
about words that don't exist around the experiences of women
and other marginalized groups. So a lot of times when
(19:19):
we people conduct these studies, they'll edit. Uh. So if
you're saying a lot of you know, our uh filler words,
that maybe those words actually point to something else and
we shouldn't be cutting them, we should be documenting why
they're there, which I thought was really interesting. Um. And
another result I got a lot of when I typed
(19:40):
in feminist listening was analy analytical listening to music with
a feminist and queer perspective. It really really does, and
apparently some colleges have programs that do this. I thought
that was pretty pretty neat. One thing I really want
(20:02):
for us as a podcast is to one day get
our show transcribed. And this is something that we used
to do, but the budget for it unfortunately got cut. Um.
It was so important to me that for a while,
I did it myself until I didn't have the bandwidth
to do it anymore. But I really really want to
(20:22):
bring that back, and I'm hoping that we can someday. Right. So,
there are some tips for anyone looking to be a
better listener, which I hope we all are doing so
um and a couple of easy steps you can take. One.
Stop talking and stop planning the next thing you're going
to say. Be in that moment, Listen to what is
(20:44):
being said to you, Ask meaningful questions, Ask questions pertaining
to what you just heard. Um. Maintain eye contact. Of
course that could be a cultural thing, by the way,
so if you don't feel comfortable with that, that's okay,
but it can't help you. At least see their face,
get their face when they're talking to you. It will help. Yeah,
(21:05):
being present and giving feedback is a really good one.
Being open minded, Like, don't immediately judge what someone is
saying to you, wait till they finish their thoughts and
then consider it, think about it, ask follow up questions. Um,
don't interrupt, practice empathy, and if you notice someone hasn't spoken,
check in, give them a platform. And I know in
(21:27):
terms of listening and in business context. Another one I
saw a lot, and I know we've probably all heard
this is make sure credit is going to where it
should go to say that person's name. That's a great idea,
Samantha had. That's a great idea. Yeah, I think that's
really important right now because there's been a big kafuffle,
I guess inside of Twitter verse. I've been stuck in
(21:50):
the Potter rush for a minute, um about people not
giving credit to people of color, women of college, specifically
black women specifically, And we need to remember that is
a rature and it is very very dangerous, especially today
in this time point when which we see there's a
lot of history trying to be rewritten and we need
to acknowledge where it comes from and why they should
(22:10):
be credited. Absolutely absolutely, UM. And then if for anybody
in your life, that maybe has any kind of difficulty
hearing or hearing loss, just you know, check in and
say what can I where can I help you? Where
can I minimize for v And again my my hearing,
(22:33):
I'm very privileged. It's still I got pretty good in
one ear. Um. It really is just like beyond that side, right, Yeah,
that's all um. So for sure, I would love to
return to this. Would love to delve into some of
these specific issues more in the future, but for now
(22:54):
it's sort of an overview some big ideas, but definitely
a ly would like to revisit. And I actually wanted
to read a listener mail we got before we end,
this one from Donica. Donica wrote, I have a great
fan fixed suggestion for you, particularly Annie as hello hello
fan fiction and this menty listeners. It's an alternative universe
(23:19):
retelling of Harry Potter, written book by book, considering what
the series would have been if James and Lily had
survived the night of Baltimore's attack. This is a project
my best friend Chase has been working on for years.
Is super well written. In particularly love it because Chase
is writing in such a way that acknowledges rolling shortcomings
in the works and improves upon them. She actually deals
(23:39):
with and addresses the inherent racism in the visiting world
against Centaur's house helves, goblins, et cetera. And when characters
are queer, she actually writes in the text that they
are queer. It's such a wonderful thing that my bestie
has poured her heart and soul into. If you two
or anyone is looking to reread Harry Potter during these
isolated times, maybe consider Chase's version and instead of supporting
(24:01):
transphobic rolling. Plus, you don't need to worry about owning
the books, as Chase's works are all accessible for free
online at archive of her own and her user page
Aiden Chase, and on Tumblr and Twitter at HP everyone lives.
Just googling HP, everyone lives a you will take you
(24:21):
right to it as well. She's currently about halfway through
publishing The Half Flood Prince, so there's a lot of
content to read. I think a lot of the listeners
would enjoy it, and the Fick deserves way more notoriety
than it has. Okay, first of all, I stand any
friend who goes out there and rallies behind them. What
(24:43):
I love this. I love everything about this I do too,
and um, I'm very excited to check this out. I've
got to say, like being on book six, that's impressive, right,
she must be for a long time, so impressive, very
very excited. Fan fiction is probably like the number one
(25:04):
thing going. I have read and written so much fan fiction. Uh.
I actually joke that I would be very embarrassed at
my internet history right now. But you know what, no shame,
no shame. Um. And and please please, we're happy to
shout things out like any entertainment that you think our
(25:26):
audience would enjoy, we would enjoy send it our way.
I know we're all looking for more more things to consume,
and we're so happy to to receive those messages and
share them. And just so you know, we are going
to do another viewing party. I know a few people
have asked because they missed this one. Although the craft
was it was pretty a banger start. Um, so we'll
(25:52):
be doing this again and we had a good time.
It was very limited, but it was still fun. So
we will be doing that again because we will be
maintaining at home still, so I look for that as well.
And again, yeah, give us all of your recommendations because
we have some time we do, and we could share
that with everybody. We could have like a big sminthy
We should, We absolutely should, and for sure send in
(26:15):
your recommendations for our next movie that we should watch,
um a book that we should read in the meantime.
Brings us to the end of this episode. If you
would like to email us, we would love to hear
from you. Our email is Stuff Media mom Stuff at
i heeart media dot com. You can also find us
on Twitter at mom Stuff Podcast, or on Instagram and
(26:36):
Stuff I've Never Told You. Thanks as always to our
super producer Andrew Howard, and thanks to you for listening.
Stuff I've Never Told You is a protection of i
heeart Radio. For more podcast from i heeart Radio, check
out the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you
listen to your favorite ship.
Hey, this is Annie Oh Sava, and welcome to stuff
I've never told your protection of I heart Radio. Today
we are tackling a topic that is a personal one
for me, as you know, Samantha, because we've discussed it
(00:26):
a lot. Due to an injury when I was in
middle school, I lost a decent amount of hearing capability
in my right ear, and it has impacted so much
of my life. The way I walk, where I sit,
the processing time it takes for me to understand. I
(00:47):
feel like I'm having to do a lot of mental work,
the panic when talking on the phone if I can't
see your face. Oh, the way that I sleep because
I sleep on my right ear so I can hear
if something is happening with my left ear. Um. And
I recognize that I'm very, very privileged to have the
hearing that I do. But I would be lying if
I said that it wasn't a source of a lot
(01:09):
of anxiety for me, especially because we are in an
audio media our job, it's all about hearing and listening
and us. Of course, now that we're coming to you
from our I call my studio studio quarantine, my closet
studio um. That means a lot more phone interviews and
(01:30):
or skype interviews, so it's been on my mind. Um,
and I did get this injury in a pretty dramatic way.
So it's just this reminder every day. Uh, and sometimes
it is very triggering, and I have I've only just
started opening up about it because people at work started
(01:50):
noticing habits that I had that I would always sit
on one side of the table. I would sit on
one side of the boom. Um. And then I had
to confess us that I phone interviews made me really
really anxious on this show because people would sort of
be like, I feel like you never talking that much
during those episodes of listeners right in and I I
(02:13):
would say, I'm probably trying very very hard to catch
up with what they just said and to process that
information and then have a comment. And by the time
I've done that, the conversations moved on or something. Yeah, um,
I remember when you first told me. I just assumed
it was the professionalism of like waiting and pausing just
(02:36):
in case they wanted to add things. So to me,
I was like, oh, oh, okay, yeah, that makes sense.
And as a person that doesn't struggle with that, I
could absolutely understand. I'm like, oh, that makes a lot
more sense to your reaction time, to your habits in general.
I'm like, yeah, I actually had my h earlier school.
I don't know what it's called. Schools of days that
(02:57):
wasn't college. What are those? I'm very education sure, okay,
I know words. Um. During that time, like my best
friend's little sister had also had damage on one side
of her ear through illness, and so she was deaf
in one ear, and I remember having to understand, oh,
that's why she's not paying attention, and when I'm trying
(03:17):
to talk to her on the side of her it's
not just because she's not listening to me, which I'm
sure has been an issue with yours your stuff as well,
when you're like, no, I'm not being awkward, No I'm
not ignoring you. I just literally did not hear you
because you're on the wrong side of my body. Yeah.
And sometimes I catch myself doing what I feel like
(03:41):
is I think I feel like dogs do this where
they sort of cock their head. So sometimes if it
the room has been silent for a while, I just
kind of turned my head and cock it to make
sure there isn't a sound that I'm not picking up
on that I should be picking up on UM. And
I even had somebody tell me that UM is for
a movie I was in. He said I almost didn't
(04:01):
get the job because of how awkward I was on
the phone, and he felt he felt terrible when I
told him my struggles with the phone. Yeah yeah, yeah,
But I mean that was in a way both very
upseting and very comforting to know it's not just in
my head. There is a blettle of awkwardness happening here. Well.
(04:24):
To be fair, I am really awkward on the phone
as well. I'll rush you off a conversation real quick
because I hate being on the phone anyway. And I
does don't like just pausing and just be like, what
are you? Are you saying that? Me? You? Me? You
like that whole level, So that could be so for sure,
(04:46):
I don't. I only have like three friends and a
few family members that like talking on the phone. It's
just it doesn't seem like it's a really popular thing,
and no one likes it. After you can figure out
you don't actually have to be on the phone anymore
to come memunicates, I'm like, oh, let's do this other
way instead. I'm not gonna lie though, because whole like
face to face thing is also shocking new level of shocking. Yes, yes,
(05:09):
I much prefer that, uh but yeah, yeah, for sure.
Um So in this episode, we're going to look at
some specific aspects of hearing when it comes to women
and listening when it comes to women, and other intersections
of that. But honestly, this is a huge There are
(05:30):
so many lanes we could have gone down. Well, yeah,
just by the definition of hearing and listening, you could
go into the figurative, you could go into the water
roll and and it is the whole several topic worth
absolutely and we definitely have touched on some of those
topics in previous episodes and we'll be sure to shout
those out as we go along. But okay, let's let's
(05:52):
get into the meat the meat. Yeah, So when it
comes to listening, as with a lot of things, we
talked about a whole lot of fact just play a role, culture, gender, race, socialization,
relationships topics, and many more. Yes, And for Samantha and
I in particular, we've definitely had a handful of episodes
(06:15):
where we've talked about how we judge women's voices more
harshly when it comes to things like up talk and
vocal fry, the credibility gap. Um, So those are out
there as well, and it is it does play a
role in what we're talking about, but we're not going
to hone in specifically on those things too much today.
So hearing in terms of science of hearing or of
(06:36):
physical hearing, there's a lot out there. Most of the
studies seem to suggest that women generally have more hearing
sensitivity and greater susceptibility to high frequency noise exposure, among
other things, while men have greater sound localization again, among
other things. Yeah, I had to look up so many
terms when reading these research papers to understand what was
(07:00):
going on. So let's talk about hearing loss for a second.
Over fifty million Americans experience hearing loss. The National Institute
on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders found that men are
twice as likely to experience hearing loss and much less
likely to seek help for it. Men tend to lose
higher frequencies first, while women lose lower frequencies first, according
(07:22):
to the Hearing Aid Project, That means women's ability to
hear vowels is more impacted, while men's ability to hear
consonants is more impacted, which can foster a lot of miscommunication.
Women with hearing laws are more likely to use verbal
and maladaptive strategies, things like interrupting people, informing people about
what they're hearing laws, all that rights, and from what
(07:45):
I could ascertain from the study, men are more likely
to just sort of shrug it off. Right. Yeah, but
let's talk about listening to women. So we have a
long story history of fictional women warning of danger to come.
We know this at example, maybe Cassadra warning the Greeks
(08:06):
of the Trojan Horse comes to mind, um, and not
being listened to. We have so many examples of this
in our media that my co host over at Savor,
Lauren and I did a whole episode on this show
um when it comes to the context of horror movies,
called why Didn't You Believe Her? And then we tied
it into the whole Brett Kabin of thing. So, if
(08:27):
you are looking for more examples, so many, so many examples.
A study so little dated found that when presenting if
ho on a traditionally masculine topic, a traditionally feminine topic,
and a neutral topic, people listened more carefully to the
male speakers even when the presentation was the same. In
(08:48):
all of the presentations, even the traditionally feminine topic, there
wasn't a difference and who was more informative the male
or female presenters are the participants rating of who is
more informative of When it came to effectiveness, steady participants
generally rated the male presenter with the same level of effectiveness,
but the male respondents gave higher ratings to the female
(09:11):
presenters than the women in the study did, and the
theory was that men the male participants did not expect
the female presenters to be competent, so when they were,
they rated them higher than they did the men. This
is directly out of the study, it says, as one
basis for this differential evaluation. Burger, Cohen and Zeldag and
(09:32):
Lockheed in Hall have suggested that difference in the evaluation
of behavior of males and females are directly related to
the effect of sex as a status characteristics. Since the
male sex is more highly valued and thus is accorded
higher status, Assessments of male behaviors are also valued more
even when compared to equally effective behavior performed by a female.
(09:53):
A possible consequence of these perceived differences is that if
women are perceived as being less competent, this might influence
the ability to exert influence and impair their credibility rights.
A two thousand study used brain scans to determine that
men listen with one side of their brain, while women
listen with both. This doesn't mean that women are better listeners, though,
(10:15):
and the researchers cautioned that they couldn't untangle whether this
was because of hardwiring in the brain or social conditioning.
So other research on the brain hash down that even
at a young age, boys and girls process language differently,
more sensory for boys and abstract for girls. Scientists are
still looking into whether these differences disappear in adulthood. So
(10:40):
we got a lot of things going on there. We
got a lot of threads of social conditioning and culture
than we have science showing something in the brain is
going on. Um, And it is difficult to unpack all
of that stuff when it comes to why, alps we
(11:01):
do listen to women differently? Are there are these sex
differences and why and how we listen? Um? And that's
that's only a handful of the studies. We have some more,
but first we have a quick break for a word
from our sponsor, and we're back. Thank you sponsor. So
(11:32):
a few years ago, Carol Kinzie Goman researched gender differences
and communication skills and workplace environments across the United States, Canada,
and Europe. Respondents generally gave the same mish answers for
strengths and weaknesses in themselves and each other. So, for women,
the strengths generally given were ability to read body language
(11:54):
and pick up nonverbal cues, good listening skills, effective display
of empathy, and the weakness is given were overly emotional, meandering,
won't get to the point, not authoritative right. So for men,
the strengths were commanding physical presence direct into the point interactions,
affective display of power, and the weaknesses were overly blunt
(12:17):
and direct, insensitive to audience reactions, and too confident in
own opinion. So those are some pretty big differences, and
a lot of them do fall along stereotypical gender lines
gender performative lines. The study broke down communication styles into warmth,
so things like caring, likability, empathy, and authority, credibility, status
(12:41):
and power. According to the findings women are better at
the warmth part and men at the authority part. And
I was thinking about this, Maybe better isn't the right word.
It could be that due to socialization and historical power structures,
that's where women were allowed to excel and that's where
men were allowed to excel. Again, it's really hard to
(13:05):
to unpack untangle all of this. Anyway, The study found
that women are better at collaborative environments at dialogue, while
men are better at the monologue. Here's a quote from
the study um which was reported on at Forbes. Women
display more warm body language cues. They are more likely
(13:27):
to focus on those who are speaking by orienting head
and torso to face participants. They leaned forward, smiles, synchronize
their movements with others, not until their heads the universal
signal of listening literally giving someone your ear. Men said
more status signals through an array of dominant behaviors such
as side to side, headshaking, anger, and discussed expressions. They
(13:48):
stand tall, are they sprawl sitting with their legs spread,
are widely crossed, their materials spread out on a conference table,
and their arms stretched out on the back of a chair.
M So this article went on to catalog the general
differences in body language between men and women. For men,
not in usually means I agree, whereas for women it
(14:08):
can mean either I agree, or I'm listening to you,
or as an encouragement to the speaker to keep going.
It also found that men talk more in meetings than women. Surprise, Yeah, well,
and I was thinking about that too, because I find
it interesting that in our mainstream stereotype of women, it's
it's like they talk more than men. You've got your
(14:30):
chatty Cathy's I can't get them to stop, and oh no,
she's on the phone. It's all over. I know. My
mom was a frequent target of these kinds of comments,
and when I got older and I would talk to
her about that, oftentimes it's she wanted the conversation to end,
(14:52):
but did Usually dude in the picture was just overstand,
like I have five ambles, I think, and was just
talking away at her. And yet she was the one
who's getting made fun of, and not that we should
be making fun of people who want to talk, but
she was the one that was getting picked on for
(15:14):
being chatty, even though she probably just like yeah, yes,
encouraging exactly. Um and research does not bear out that
women are the big talkers at all. Some researchers found
that in most situations, men dominate seventy of speaking time.
Women are more likely to be interrupted than men on
(15:36):
a number which goes up when more men are present.
But research has also found that even though women are
speaking last, people perceive that they speak more than they do.
So I feel like this is another way to minimize women,
To encourage women to stay quiet, because otherwise you're talking
too much and people are gonna laugh at you. Now again,
(15:59):
this this is a very complex thing that we're talking
about with a lot going on. These are generalizations. Um,
always more researchers need, more sciences needed. Uh. I will
say women, and we've talked about this before, they do
typically have more social relationships, So I can understand perhaps
(16:22):
where that stereotype came from in terms of women just
have more people to talk to generally. Um, but yeah,
and I'm probably most likely to reach out. Yes, Yes,
So a lot of advice out there in the business
realm to be more sort of lean in, put the
responsibility on women to adapt to masculalized environment and that bossy,
(16:45):
bitchy fallback is waiting right there in the wings to
come on out right. So the advice feels like it's
telling women to be more like men. But then when
you do that, then you're called these terms. You're not
doing this enough, but when you do it, you're doing
too much exactly. And also it is sort of implying
(17:12):
that this masculine environment is the right one and that
women should change to fit into that instead of maybe
we should all be listening more right, Yes, yes, and
we do have some some more tips around that. But
first we have one more quick break for word from
(17:32):
our sponsor and we're back, Thank you, sponsor. So I
was reading an article in the New York Times when
(17:52):
researching this are, written by Dr pabolis Um, and in
it she wrote about what she called feminist listening, which
I thought was an interesting term, and she described women,
particularly white women, not engaging in feminist listening when women,
for example, we're warning of Trump's sexist, racist, abusive behavior.
(18:14):
All right, And of course everything we've talked about could
further be broken down to the intersectional issues. How do
we listen or not to women of color, to non
binary pos, to the l g b t Q plus individuals,
And we do have a lot of stereotypes that hang
ups around voices, which is something we've talked about and
again needs to be probably a bigger episode in itself
(18:35):
to revisit. Yes, absolutely. If you google feminist listening, by
the way, most of the top results are either listen
to women, Okay, something about reframing how we construct studies.
I actually found this really fascinating. So they in this
particular study I'm thinking of, they were describing how we
(18:58):
need to change how we listen to participants in studies, UM,
examining gaps in research and why those gaps exist. And
then um, words that don't exist. We need to think
about words that don't exist around the experiences of women
and other marginalized groups. So a lot of times when
(19:19):
we people conduct these studies, they'll edit. Uh. So if
you're saying a lot of you know, our uh filler words,
that maybe those words actually point to something else and
we shouldn't be cutting them, we should be documenting why
they're there, which I thought was really interesting. Um. And
another result I got a lot of when I typed
(19:40):
in feminist listening was analy analytical listening to music with
a feminist and queer perspective. It really really does, and
apparently some colleges have programs that do this. I thought
that was pretty pretty neat. One thing I really want
(20:02):
for us as a podcast is to one day get
our show transcribed. And this is something that we used
to do, but the budget for it unfortunately got cut. Um.
It was so important to me that for a while,
I did it myself until I didn't have the bandwidth
to do it anymore. But I really really want to
(20:22):
bring that back, and I'm hoping that we can someday. Right. So,
there are some tips for anyone looking to be a
better listener, which I hope we all are doing so
um and a couple of easy steps you can take. One.
Stop talking and stop planning the next thing you're going
to say. Be in that moment, Listen to what is
(20:44):
being said to you, Ask meaningful questions, Ask questions pertaining
to what you just heard. Um. Maintain eye contact. Of
course that could be a cultural thing, by the way,
so if you don't feel comfortable with that, that's okay,
but it can't help you. At least see their face,
get their face when they're talking to you. It will help. Yeah,
(21:05):
being present and giving feedback is a really good one.
Being open minded, Like, don't immediately judge what someone is
saying to you, wait till they finish their thoughts and
then consider it, think about it, ask follow up questions. Um,
don't interrupt, practice empathy, and if you notice someone hasn't spoken,
check in, give them a platform. And I know in
(21:27):
terms of listening and in business context. Another one I
saw a lot, and I know we've probably all heard
this is make sure credit is going to where it
should go to say that person's name. That's a great idea,
Samantha had. That's a great idea. Yeah, I think that's
really important right now because there's been a big kafuffle,
I guess inside of Twitter verse. I've been stuck in
(21:50):
the Potter rush for a minute, um about people not
giving credit to people of color, women of college, specifically
black women specifically, And we need to remember that is
a rature and it is very very dangerous, especially today
in this time point when which we see there's a
lot of history trying to be rewritten and we need
to acknowledge where it comes from and why they should
(22:10):
be credited. Absolutely absolutely, UM. And then if for anybody
in your life, that maybe has any kind of difficulty
hearing or hearing loss, just you know, check in and
say what can I where can I help you? Where
can I minimize for v And again my my hearing,
(22:33):
I'm very privileged. It's still I got pretty good in
one ear. Um. It really is just like beyond that side, right, Yeah,
that's all um. So for sure, I would love to
return to this. Would love to delve into some of
these specific issues more in the future, but for now
(22:54):
it's sort of an overview some big ideas, but definitely
a ly would like to revisit. And I actually wanted
to read a listener mail we got before we end,
this one from Donica. Donica wrote, I have a great
fan fixed suggestion for you, particularly Annie as hello hello
fan fiction and this menty listeners. It's an alternative universe
(23:19):
retelling of Harry Potter, written book by book, considering what
the series would have been if James and Lily had
survived the night of Baltimore's attack. This is a project
my best friend Chase has been working on for years.
Is super well written. In particularly love it because Chase
is writing in such a way that acknowledges rolling shortcomings
in the works and improves upon them. She actually deals
(23:39):
with and addresses the inherent racism in the visiting world
against Centaur's house helves, goblins, et cetera. And when characters
are queer, she actually writes in the text that they
are queer. It's such a wonderful thing that my bestie
has poured her heart and soul into. If you two
or anyone is looking to reread Harry Potter during these
isolated times, maybe consider Chase's version and instead of supporting
(24:01):
transphobic rolling. Plus, you don't need to worry about owning
the books, as Chase's works are all accessible for free
online at archive of her own and her user page
Aiden Chase, and on Tumblr and Twitter at HP everyone lives.
Just googling HP, everyone lives a you will take you
(24:21):
right to it as well. She's currently about halfway through
publishing The Half Flood Prince, so there's a lot of
content to read. I think a lot of the listeners
would enjoy it, and the Fick deserves way more notoriety
than it has. Okay, first of all, I stand any
friend who goes out there and rallies behind them. What
(24:43):
I love this. I love everything about this I do too,
and um, I'm very excited to check this out. I've
got to say, like being on book six, that's impressive, right,
she must be for a long time, so impressive, very
very excited. Fan fiction is probably like the number one
(25:04):
thing going. I have read and written so much fan fiction. Uh.
I actually joke that I would be very embarrassed at
my internet history right now. But you know what, no shame,
no shame. Um. And and please please, we're happy to
shout things out like any entertainment that you think our
(25:26):
audience would enjoy, we would enjoy send it our way.
I know we're all looking for more more things to consume,
and we're so happy to to receive those messages and
share them. And just so you know, we are going
to do another viewing party. I know a few people
have asked because they missed this one. Although the craft
was it was pretty a banger start. Um, so we'll
(25:52):
be doing this again and we had a good time.
It was very limited, but it was still fun. So
we will be doing that again because we will be
maintaining at home still, so I look for that as well.
And again, yeah, give us all of your recommendations because
we have some time we do, and we could share
that with everybody. We could have like a big sminthy
We should, We absolutely should, and for sure send in
(26:15):
your recommendations for our next movie that we should watch,
um a book that we should read in the meantime.
Brings us to the end of this episode. If you
would like to email us, we would love to hear
from you. Our email is Stuff Media mom Stuff at
i heeart media dot com. You can also find us
on Twitter at mom Stuff Podcast, or on Instagram and
(26:36):
Stuff I've Never Told You. Thanks as always to our
super producer Andrew Howard, and thanks to you for listening.
Stuff I've Never Told You is a protection of i
heeart Radio. For more podcast from i heeart Radio, check
out the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you
listen to your favorite ship.
Stuff Mom Never Told You News
Hosts And Creators
Anney Reese
Samantha McVey
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