First Came Mansplaining, Then Came Manterruptions

Perhaps you too have noticed the recent preponderance of terms that give a sense of a man-centered world. For instance, manspreading, mansplaining, and, of course, who could forget (try as they might), the man-bun. All these newly coined words don’t just show that humans have a remarkable capacity to be linguistically creative, but also capture how men and women experience the world in different ways. After all, a masculinizing take on sitting style and explanatory tendencies communicates something unique about the way that men engage in taking up space and contributing to discussion that women don’t apparently share.

But the recent uproar over Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s hijacking of a female cabinet member’s response to a reporter’s question on what it is like to be a woman in parliament reminds us of yet another insightful new term: the manterruption.

The cabinet member, Anne Ruston, had barely starting speaking when Morrison cut her off to put in his two cents. As the most powerful man in Australia, Morrison has no idea of what it’s like to be a woman, especially a woman negotiating her way in a workplace dominated by men. And in fact Morrison’s government has been referred to as a "mate-ocracy" amid multiple allegations of sexual misconduct among its senior (male) leaders, so interrupting Ruston to insert his own view was perhaps par for the course. But his obliviousness to how perfectly he exemplified the pervasive masculine culture the reporter was asking about was remarkable.

But, regrettably, not unique. This unmindful behavior underscores a trend we often see in male-dominated professions where women’s turn at the conversational floor is usurped by men. While we seem to believe that women are always the ones talking, in fact, they often have problems getting a word in edgewise.

To understand what interruptions are and the danger they pose to equitable distributions of power in workplaces and other institutions, we first have to understand a little about the underlying mechanisms of conversation. In order to make conversation flow smoothly, all speakers have to recognize and follow some rules. One key rule is that we must take turns on the conversational floor, allowing speakers to have their say.

Obviously, it makes sense that we can’t all talk at the same time and be heard. But the elephant in the conversation is how social identities and power asymmetries shape who actually controls the conversational floor, and this is where historical biases and gender stereotypes enter the fray.

A number of linguistic studies, dating as far back as the 1970’s, have looked at who interrupts whom in mixed and same-sex conversations, and they point to a strong trend of women’s voices being the ones cut off when men are in the room. In a well-known 1975 paper, researchers Candice West and Don Zimmerman found that when men and women were talking with each other, men interrupted women far more than the reverse, with 96% of the interruptions cutting off women’s turns. When talking to members of the same sex, however, interruptions were much more balanced.

Times, of course, have changed a bit from the 70s. Not only do we have better fashion sense, but, one hopes, also a bit more gender equality. Certainly, more recent work does find that interruptions are not always this one-sided, particularly in everyday conversations. But this trend still holds true in institutional contexts where men traditionally hold power and authority, such as boardrooms, courtrooms and, clearly, parliamentary houses.

And perhaps equally important are the research studies that suggest we expect more dominant verbal behavior by men and thus have greater allowance for it than we do for women in similar positions (e.g., Brescoll 2011, Kendall and Tannen 1997). In other words, our gender stereotypes make us feel like women do a lot of talking, even when they are often the ones interrupted, and any interruptions they make are viewed more negatively. Mansplaining, it seems, has its rewards.

In a striking example of how even extremely powerful women are subject to this dynamic, Feldman and Gill (2019) looked at interruptions among U.S. Supreme Court Justices during oral arguments, an important component of the court process where justices have an opportunity to direct and frame the interaction, potentially influencing the ultimate decision reached.

According to the researchers, justices use their turns on the floor during this process to hone in on achieving larger policy goals, drawing attention to ideas that support their points and inhibiting other justices from expressing theirs. Thus, the more speaking turns a justice commands, the greater the opportunity for influencing outcomes.

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Women silenced

Source: Kristina Flour/Unsplash

Feldman and Gill found that female justices were more often interrupted, not just by the male justices, but also each other. This ties into the historically based belief we have that women dominate turns at talk, despite the fact, especially in professional settings, that they rarely do. As a result of this implicit bias, both men and women feel that interrupting these perceived conversational floor hoggers is acceptable.

More telling, when interrupted by a male colleague, the female justices spoke less in response, a situation that did not occur when they were interrupted by a female colleague. On the other hand, male justices showed the exact opposite trend—speaking more (as measured by word count) when interrupted by anyone. The authors suggest this reveals a response mediated by what’s referred to as "stereotype threat," a situation where people respond in socially expected ways when primed by something that reminds them of a relevant stereotype. Here being interrupted seems to invoke norming toward the stereotype that men hold social and conversational power and that women are expected to act accordingly.

And, if it happens at the Supreme Court, it is not likely that it is staying at the Supreme Court, as many women can attest. The very recent experiences of female candidates in the traditionally male-dominated world of politics provide more evidence of the silencing effects of manterruptions.

Looking back at the 2016 Presidential debates, Sen. Hillary Clinton was consistently interrupted by Donald Trump, who was not sharply admonished for such behavior until 2020, when he debated Joe Biden. And in the 2019 Democratic primary debates, when a number of prominent women stood onstage, it was the men who did most of the interrupting, often talking over each other. The end effect of all these interruptions is that female Presidential hopefuls including Clinton, Warren, and Klobuchar are able to say less by following the rules of conversational turn-taking more. Yet when Clinton had taken a different tack and interrupted Bernie Sanders in the 2016 primary, he called her to task for it.

In other words, men can talk more and take the floor without affecting how they are perceived while women are policed for the same behavior, especially in high-stakes environments like their workplace or politics. Compared to men, studies suggest that women who interrupt are viewed as less likable, more dominant, and more aggressive (LaFrance 1992, Youngquist 2009), none of which are particularly appealing traits in professional colleagues or elected leaders.

So, can we surmount the difficulties faced by professional women in holding their position on the conversational floor? In short, yes. The coinage of terms like manterruptions and mansplaining draw attention to the collective experience of women everywhere, and emphasize the behavior’s negative and belittling effects. Also, the fact that the media is calling out those in authority like the Australian PM when they egregiously interrupt suggests we are slowly moving away from ignoring and norming such conduct.

We can’t change what we don’t notice, so the very fact that we are aware of this pattern helps us work to break down the underlying bias behind it. In business contexts, meetings can be organized in more floor-equitable ways like making sure to select women as next speakers when we are the ones holding the conversational floor or by noticing when colleagues are interrupting others, regardless of gender. Subordinates or colleagues who are consistently quiet may simply be finding it hard to comfortably break into conversation, so allow them non-competitive opportunities to speak.

And, finally, when being interrupted ourselves, maybe we can follow the lead of Kamala Harris in her recent debate, when she very politely admonished her rival: “Mr. Vice President, I’m speaking. If you don’t mind waiting until I’m finished, we can then have a conversation, OK?” We could all learn a thing or two from this polite yet firm reminder of our right to take a turn on the conversational floor.