Silencing Women in Deliberative Practices: Gendered Behaviors as Epistemic and Emotional Injustices

Men’s negative deliberative behaviors, such as cutting others off or dominating speech, as noted by Afsoun Afsahi, undermine women’s efforts to be effective deliberators, and demonstrate that deliberative democracy is not equipped to eliminate structural inequalities as consisting of behaviors influenced by systemic gender bias. This is demonstrated by illustrating that their male counterparts wouldn't be subjected to such negative deliberative behaviors. In fact, men's speech is often characterized as assertive and confrontational, despite these negative deliberative behaviors, while women's speech is viewed as tentative, exploratory, or conciliatory. In essence, it goes beyond the mere expression of women's voices; it involves examining how others respond and act. Following Afsahi's study, I contend that these men’s negative deliberative behaviors function as tools of discursive dysfunction, specifically, epistemic injustice, as women are regarded as less credible when they make claims, and emotional injustice, as women are less likely to express willingness to deliberate. Here, both injustices are utilized as internalized forms of discrimination that favor the collective associated with men and marginalize anything related to women and other identities. The advantage of these injustices is that they morally detach the agent from their actions towards the victim, creating a moral comfort zone to perpetuate a misogynistic social environment in deliberative practices. To reduce gendered behaviors, it is necessary to take the social actor out of their moral comfort zone so that they can confront any bias that, until now, they hadn't understood as morally reprehensible. Utilizing deliberative worth exercises can be a way.