Say it loud

Why can’t a woman sneeze, laugh, or whistle just as loud as a man?

- Bijoy Venugopal

BEFORE IN-PERSON meetings at the office became a thing of the past, a female colleague and I were poring over a presentation when a loud, uninhibited sneeze rang out across the office bay. Our train of thought derailed, we looked in the general direction of the report with mild amusement. On my colleague’s face, I thought I noted a sense of triumph. Catching my puzzled expression, she said: “You barely noticed that it was a woman sneezing, did you?”

I admitted to my surprise. In fact, the more I thought about it, I remembered that I had seldom heard a woman sneeze with such unbridled confidence. Men, on the other hand, announced nasal irritation like town criers. Yet, besides walking up and offering a box of tissues to the sneezer, we had never considered this a gendered issue, or looked at the imbalance seriously.

In almost any context, women have to fight to be heard. The put-downs they experience from men may be overt — direct overruling and talking down — or subtle, as in interruption, talking over, mishearing, or snide remarks aimed to remind her of her place. A woman sneezing loudly, or laughing out loud, is expected to follow it up with an apology. In that sense, our female colleague with an allergy to dander was a feminist because no apologies followed, only more sneezes!