This compilation represents a multitude of perspectives on the interactions between gender and speech; it covers such topics as Male Resistance to Female Participation on the Internet, and A Synthetic Sisterhood: False Friends in a Teenage Magazine. The essays are generally wonky and academic; however, the sheer number of learned viewpoints gives enough value to the discussion to make some slogging worthwhile.
I can't help but look at the 23 female authors and think that there is an imbalance of some sort here. I wonder if there are no critical examinations of female speech as it might be damaging or undercutting to men simply because no such papers exist, or whether there is a political agenda that exists as a smudge on the objectivity of the collection. But even if that is true (and I'd give 5-3 odds that it is), the ideas that the book give voice to are of great value, and are overpowered by a society that is hopelessly biased in the other direction.
I'm still waiting for the book or other platform which will allow these ideas to permeate to Jane Average working in small town America; right now, they don't seem to be able to trickle down beneath the level of articulate women at university cocktail parties.