Deliberation (or, at least, group discussion)—in congressional committee meetings, town halls, juries, PTAs, and living rooms—may be the lifeblood of democracy, but in the vast majority of such occasions, women are effectively silenced. This is just one of the revelations Christopher Karpowitz and Tali Mendelberg offer in their meticulously researched and forcefully argued tome, The Silent Sex: Gender, Deliberation and Institutions. When small groups and meetings include few women and work under conditions of (or like) majority rule—as they so often do in politics—women speak much less than men do and are much less likely to speak with authority. More precisely, in male-dominated settings where numbers matter and conflict is the norm, the few women present are highly unlikely to voice their preferences or concerns (especially those widely recognized as “women's issues”), steer the discussion accordingly, be treated respectfully (or at least without hostility), be recognized (by themselves or others) as influential, or actually have influence. Women's opinions, even when expressed, carry even less weight than their small numbers would suggest. As a result, the outcomes of such deliberations are often biased against women's distinctive concerns and choices.

This we learn primarily through Karpowitz and Mendelberg's remarkably detailed and rigorous analysis of the discursive dynamics of 94 experimentally manipulated five-member groups tasked with discussing and collectively choosing one of four principles of redistribution (for themselves and for society at large). While their elaborate experimental design has a great deal to offer, their gesture toward external validity is even more shocking. Even on local school boards—a “woman's game” if there ever was one in politics, and where reticent, insecure, demure women have (been) already selected out—women are “the silent sex” whenever and wherever their numbers are few. Indeed, it often takes a supermajority of women to ensure gender equality in political or civic deliberations, in real life as well as the laboratory.

Equally, if not more, important is what The Silent Sex has to tell us about how and why gender inequality is so often reinforced and produced by deliberative democracy. For it is here where we learn about the crucial role of institutions and institutional context. It's not like social inequalities and the epistemic devaluation of women in particular are discarded or left outside the door when small groups gather. We bring that baggage in with us. But according the Karpowitz and Mendelberg, two group-level factors consistently and powerfully interact to determine how much of that baggage gets unpacked and deployed: gender composition and the decision-making rule (and/or the norms it sets). The effect of one depends on the other. As alluded to above, women are most likely to be silent (or silenced) when they are few in number and when numbers matter—that is, when majorities rule and norms of interaction are competitive and conflictual. Under such politics-as-usual conditions, the baggage of gender inequality is at everyone's full disposal. Increasing women's descriptive representation or numerical presence in deliberative groups goes a long way toward empowering women and women's voices, but again, only under majority-rule where the weight of women's numbers keeps the baggage of epistemic male privilege shut. Conversely, under rules of unanimity and/or inclusive norms of consensus-building or problem-solving interaction, everyone's voice counts, and even “token” women speak frequently and with authority. The gender baggage that casts aspersions on women's beliefs, opinions, or knowledge is put aside. Nonetheless, unanimity and inclusion are double-edged swords. When men are in the minority, the imperatives of inclusion tend to augment their already prevalent voices; the gender baggage is wide open.

Karpowitz and Mendelberg masterfully articulate this complex argument—without the baggage metaphor—by tracing its theoretical lineage across multiple disciplines and calling forth an impressive array of empirical support. For these very reasons, their contributions and the implications of their work are profound and reach well beyond the study of women's political participation or deliberative democracy. To take just a few examples, The Silent Sex has a great deal to offer those of us who study women, gender, and political representation and struggle to explain why elected women, who are quite likely to be different from their male counterparts (in terms of advocating for women or women's interests), are nonetheless often unlikely to make a difference (in terms of policy outcomes that address such interests). Another important lesson is how fruitful it would be if those (political scientists in particular) who study gender and those who study institutions would talk to and listen to each other more. What Karpowitz and Mendelberg demonstrate so convincingly, in fact, is how gender and institutions are deeply intertwined. Neither can be fully understood without the other. Finally, Karpowitz and Mendelberg leverage their findings to provide very useful practical advice for “discussion facilitators” (347), much of which is readily applicable to our classrooms and faculty or professional meetings. Gender equality in meaningful, authoritative participation, they suggest, can be furthered any number of ways, including such easy-to-implement measures as imposing a minimum and/or maximum number of speaking turns or inviting group members to express and explain their agreement, especially with statements offered by relatively quiet speakers.

While there is much to learn from and appreciate about The Silent Sex, it does have one significant limitation: largely because the experiments were conducted in the authors' racially homogeneous college towns, the data and, thus, the generalizability of the findings, are limited to non-Hispanic whites. Karpowitz and Mendelberg readily acknowledge this; to their credit, they do not assume—or let readers assume—that what they have to say about “women” or “gender” applies to all women or all intersectional manifestations of gender. Nonetheless, as the U.S. population becomes more and more racially and ethnically diverse and our world becomes more and more globally integrated, our white-only knowledge will become less and less useful.

At more than 350 pages (not including hefty appendices), the entire volume may be too much for classroom use, even at the graduate level. However, the quality and accessibility of the research and writing make lengthy excerpts or a mildly “edited” version of the book well worth it.