"Young Women Shouldn’t Have to Talk Like Men to Be Taken Seriously"

"But even if women did uptalk more than men, we've all heard enough uptalk to know that its rising intonation doesn't indicate a question. No one's actually confused. So why should anyone have a problem with it? The thing is, this pastime of critiquing women’s speech is not limited to American English speakers. It’s easy to find these attitudes in any culture that devalues femininity and women. In  Belfast English, stereotypical women’s speech falls at the end of a sentence, while men’s speech rises before it plateaus—basically, the men are uptalking. And yet Belfast women’s speech is still perceived as more expressive or emotional, showing that it's not about their actual intonation at all: It's about whose mouth the speech is coming from...employers admit to actively punishing workers who use uptalk, and many women, especially women of color, simply can’t afford not to change their voice in order to gain respect. But just because sexism exists doesn't mean that the sexists are right about it"

http://www.slate.com/blogs/lexicon_valley/2014/12/16/uptalk_is_okay_young_women_shouldn_t_have_to_talk_like_men_to_be_taken_seriously.html

Related: “Why I’m Genderqueer, Professional and Unafraid”