"Even when a woman directly asks him a question, if there is a man present, he will address his response predominantly to the man." Credit:Stocksy The implicit message was that while my friend and her female colleague might have asked the question, the men were really the decision makers and therefore were the 'real' audience. I mentioned man-talking in my exercise class and every woman present had stories to share. From shopping for floor boards, opening a bank account, or presenting work to a client, being ignored by a man-talker seems to be an experience universally shared among women. Another friend who heads marketing at a large retail company tells the story of a meeting with an advertising executive who came to pitch for work and spent the entire meeting talking to the male graduate she'd just taken on. Some may think this is just a matter of women's perception. Perhaps the women actually were addressed in equal measure by men, but didn't feel this was the case.

But, then, how to explain my friend who bid at a house auction. After she bid, the auctioneer paused to seek her husband's permission. "Is that alright?" the agent asked her husband before accepting the bid. Auctioneers seem to have form as man-talkers. Another friend walked out of a house auction because the real estate agent was a man-talker. "My boyfriend was standing quite some distance from me and I was clearly the one making the bid, but the auctioneer kept throwing the bid to him. I was down to the final two bidders and I just left," my friend Jane said. "I wasn't going to buy anything off a man like that who was so publicly disrespecting and ignoring me when he knew all along that I was the buyer". Man-talkers can be found in the most unlikely places. I've toured a potential school for my daughter – a school that prided itself on diversity and inclusion – and when I asked the male principal a question about the school's policy he chose to direct his answer my husband. He even angled his body language to shut me out of the conversation entirely. Man-talking is a way that men not only dominate physical space, but also cognitive, emotional and social space too. They hog an unfair share of the conversation bandwidth and by doing so draw other men into it too. When a man man-talks, the other man feels compelled to manswer.

I suspect that many men are not even aware that they are man-talkers. I know men who would claim to be feminist supporters who will talk to my husband as if I were invisible. Or corporate clients who wear all the right pins on their lapels but still direct their questions to my more junior male colleague. Perhaps these men don't know how to speak to women. Having gone to boys' schools and studied male-dominated tertiary courses and entered male-dominated professions, they may only relate to women as mothers or partners. But that doesn't account for all man-talkers. The ugly truth is that many men, whether it is conscious or not, simply do not see woman as important enough to bother with. The serious matters of life are conducted between men, whereas women are decoration. Even when there is a commercial incentive – like a female bidder at an action or a female client a man is pitching for work – some men still can't seem to manage to speak to women. But there is cause for hope. Back at my friend's interview with the two man-talkers, the panel noticed. And they decided that man-talking was a deal breaker. In a role dominated by female colleagues and female clients, the panel didn't have any confidence that the man-talkers could get the job done.

As more women become increasingly embolden to call out sexist behaviour, men who avoid talking to women should beware. Man-talkers, you're on notice. Kasey Edwards is a management consultant and author of Guilt Trip: My Quest To Leave The Baggage Behind. www.kaseyedwards.com









