A superficially researched blog post about why more women are not speaking at conferences

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There is a recent undated blog post by Misty Megia at the Theatre of Public Speaking titled Why Aren’t More Women on the Mic at Conferences? She begins with a silly claim:

 

“We’ve all heard it … Public speaking is the #1 fear in the world. While this is absolutely true, there’s more to the story for women.”

 

But back on May 28, 2019 I blogged about the question Is public speaking the number one fear in the world? And I said the answer clearly was no.

 

Then in her next paragraph Misty continues:

 

“At the turn of the century, a study published by the National Library of Medicine revealed that ‘Women reported significantly greater fear than men while talking to authority, acting/performing/giving a talk in front of an audience, working while being observed, entering a room where others are already seated, being the center of attention, speaking up at a meeting, expressing disagreement or disapproval to people they do not know very well, giving a report to a group, and giving a party.’ “ 

 

The National Library of Medicine did not publish it – they just abstracted it.  If you follow her link, you will find she referred to an abstract from an article by C. L. Turk et al. in the Journal of Anxiety Disorders for May-June 1998 titled An investigation of gender differences in social phobia. Another abstract from that magazine reveals that the participants were just 104 women and 108 men with a principal diagnosis of social phobia – a very small subgroup and not at all representative of the general public.

 

But there are five surveys of U.S. adults which found the more women than men fear public speaking. I blogged about them in a post on June 10, 2017 titled Women, public speaking, and fear. In the 1973 Bruskin survey speaking before a group was feared by 46% of women and 36% of men. And in the 1993 Bruskin-Goldring survey speaking before a group was feared by 54% of women and 34% of men. In the 2001 Gallup poll public speaking in front of an audience was feared by 44% of women and 37% of men. And a 2014 YouGov survey of how many were Very Afraid of public speaking found 24% of women and 16% of men. Another YouGov survey in 2022 found 26% of women and 20% of men feared public speaking.

 

Women are more afraid of public speaking than men. On November 10, 2015 I blogged about how a YouGov survey done in 2014 found U. S. adults were less than A Little Afraid of public speaking. How afraid can be ranked via a fear score on a scale from one to four where 1 = Not afraid at all, 2 = Not really afraid, 3 = A little afraid, and 4 = Very afraid. The fear scores was 2.70 for women and 2.36 for men.

 

The cartoon of a woman was adapted from one at Wikimedia Commons.