begins by being marginalized within a specified work setting, it is more than likely that their grievances will not be properly addressed or even understood by the ruling majority. This study indicates that the power structure of the present day American workplace is biased to a male model of behavior, status and achievement.
Tannen emphasizes in her Preface to Talking from 9 to 5 that "gender patterns" must not be falsely equated with "gender identity" (Tannen, 1994, p. 14). Differences in speech patterns between the sexes must not be misread as "absolute differences" rather than "a matter of degree and percentages" (Tannen, 1994, p. 14). Nor should they be seen as "universal rather than culturally mediated" (Tannen, 1994, p. 14). Instead, Tannen indicates that the patterns which she describes should be seen as "based on observations of particular speakers in a particular place and time" (1994, p. 14). She is further sufficiently sophisticated in linguistic analysis to indicate that her pattern samplings are from a relatively minor and privileged group, that of, "mostly (but not exclusively) middle-class Americans of European background working in offices at the present time" (Tannen, 1994, p. 14).
Since the workplace is biased to the male psychological profile, recent studies indicate that women actually function with the greatest level of satisfaction in settings that are almost exclusively male. This finding reinforces theories which indicate that "women's intergroup relations improve as their numbers decline" (Wharton, 1991, p. 368). Analyzing data collected in a 1973 Quality of Employment Survey focusing on 438 women Wharton comes to some startling conclusions. The group of women who emerge as the least satisfied are women in "female-tilted settings" where they work with only 15-30% male colleagues. What appears really to have irked these women is that in these settings the male minority were the most like...