The real reason powerful men simply can't resist talking over women (2024)

Pity Julie Etchingham. Trying to keep order in the Sunak vs Starmer TV debate earlier this week was as futile as bringing decorum to a brawl in the Dog and Duck carpark. Keir snarled, Rishi snapped, both endlessly talked over each other – and over poor Julie.

At one point Etchingham – normally so cool we might assume her veins run with cucumber water – was forced to cry: ‘Please, gentleman! We will lower our voices…’ Alas, the ref had lost control of the match.

If the debate had been hosted by a male TV presenter, would Sunak and Starmer have been quite so quick to steamroller him mid-sentence? Doubtful.

Look, I’m not one of those women who takes sexist offence at every possible opportunity. I don’t think ‘the patriarchy’ is grinding us down. But Idothink that some men have an irritating tendency to talk over women – and, in my experience, some of the worst offenders are politicians.

From 2010 to 2015, I worked in No 10, writing the prime minister’s speeches. Many a time, I sat in meetings mustering up the courage to say something in front of Very Important People, only to have my comments crushed by a verbal avalanche from a male colleague.

I recall a particularly important meeting. The subject: an upcoming speech on infrastructure. The attendees: three ministers and their various aides. I walked in well-versed on everything from airport capacity to nuclear power plant upgrades. I was, as Americans say, ‘pumped’ – but over the next hour was slowly deflated as one of the ministers interrupted me again and again.

I looked at his ears, searching in vain for a hearing aid: could he not hear me talking? It soon became apparent he just didn’t give a damn. The blush of humiliation spread up from the collar of my Zara suit: why not just stick a label on me saying I’m of lesser importance than you?

Had this happened now I am a lady of more advanced years and experience, I would have paused and gently asked the rent-a-gob minister, ‘Is it OK if I finish my point?’ But the 20-something me was a meeker creature who obediently shut her trap, and so such behaviour goes unchallenged.

At another meeting, I was the sole woman around a table with ten or so male MPs and civil servants. Only a few words into my considered thoughts on how we should present education reform, an MP I hadn’t met before stopped me in my tracks: ‘Would you be an angel and take the minutes? Thanks…’ Though I think I noticed a flicker of embarrassment on some of the men’s faces – especially those more junior than me – none of them spoke out against the blatant sexism.

While these experiences may not be surprising for a 20-something speechwriter, it is more shocking when high-powered female politicians get the same treatment. I once attended a meeting with several Cabinet ministers including then-home secretary Theresa May. While her male colleagues filled all corners of the room with their 70-decibel opinions, May was quiet. When she did speak, I winced inwardly as – more than once – she was talked over, forcing her to trail off.

Sometimes the chronic interruption is caught on camera. In the US vice-presidential TV debates in 2020, America’s second-most important person Kamala Harris was interrupted no less than ten times by her opponent Mike Pence. Exasperated, she had to protest: ‘Excuse me, I’m speaking.’

The technical term for it is ‘chronic interruption’. The layman’s term: ‘Being a jerk’. Why do they do it? Power play. Talking over others suggests you’re high status. Your opinions are more deserving of being heard.

Male politicians in particular often love the sound of their own voice; it has always been thus. Over a century ago, Princess Marie Louise (a granddaughter of Queen Victoria) dined with two giants of the British political scene.

She recalled: ‘When I left the dining room after sitting next to Mr Gladstone I thought he was the cleverest man in England, but after sitting next to Mr Disraeli I thought I was the cleverest woman in England.’ Let us say it is not uncommon in today’s Parliament to meet airtime-hoggers like Gladstone.

Plus when politicians are surrounded by yes-men and women who fawn over their every utterance (as so many are) they begin to believe that they know best about almost everything.

So, while gorillas demonstrate their dominance by chest-drumming; politicians demonstrate it by butting in – and men seem to find it easier to deploy this tactic on women. One US study from 2014 found that men were 33 per cent more likely to interrupt when talking to a woman rather than a man.

Perhaps this readiness is because of long-held biases about women being less powerful.

Maybe the chronic interrupters think that the little ladies they’re talking over will just sit there and take it. Whatever the reason, women of the working world need to rise up and put a stop to this patronising irritation. Slap on a polite smile, take a breath, and – in the words of Kamala Harris – repeat the following: ‘Excuse me, I’m speaking.’