Do men and women get equally nervous when asked to speak in public?

 

 

 

 

 

 

At Forbes on May 11, 2022 there is an article by Diana Booher titled Why public speaking skills are critical - and how to avoid 5 big mistakes women make. The five mistakes are:

 

Jerking, jabbing gestures from the wrists or elbows

Speaking too softly

Standing rigidly

Speaking too fast

Ending sentences with a rising intonation

 

But first she discusses another topic under the heading Do men and women equally get nervous when asked to speak publicly? Her answer (based on experience as a presentation coach for more than three decades) is that both men and women are equally affected. I don’t think so. There is an article by Peter Moore at YouGov on March 27, 2014 titled Argh! Snakes! America’s Top Phobias Revealed. I blogged about it on April 2, 2014 in a post titled YouGov survey of U.S. Adults found they were most commonly very afraid of snakes, heights, public speaking, spiders, and being closed in a small space.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Mr. Moore reports results from a survey (1000 adults) of fears at four levels, including one shown above - for public speaking. First let’s look at percentages for Very afraid + A little afraid. For the Total there were 56%, for Women there were 62% and for Men there were 49%. So, significantly more women than men were afraid.

 

Another way to look at those results is via a Fear Score, calculated as:

 

Fear Score = [4x(% for Very Afraid) + 3x(% for A little Afraid)

            +2x(% for Not really Afraid) + 1x(% for Not afraid at all)]    

 

For the Total the Fear Score is 2.55 (just above the 2.5 middle for the scale), for Women it is 2.70, and for Men it is 2.36. So on average women were more afraid of speaking than men were. That also was the case for students, as I blogged about on April 14, 2022 in another post titled Fear of public speaking in female and male students at the University of Karachi.