Recently, I was thinking about why men¹ talk over women, and I think it's less a gender thing, and more of a...

"men¹ are taught to talk over anyone who doesn't talk more assertively than they do"

In my roles as an executive at several tech companies, the one negative feedback I got on almost every review was that I wasn't assertive enough in meetings with other execs. One male CEO even told me "you need to interrupt more, talk more—even if you don't know the answer. Otherwise they'll think you don't have anything to say". Which, honestly, churned my stomach.

The feedback was clear, if I wanted to succeed I needed to talk like the guys¹ in the boardroom—the same ones¹ who'd interrupt to ask a question I was already in the middle of explaining, who'd repeat a suggestion I'd just made—only louder, who'd make some cute comment that would derail my presentation, who'd explain my position back to me as though they'd just thought of it.

I needed to do that...and I needed to do it louder.

Otherwise men¹ weren't going to listen to me.

¹ not all men