Why Do Women Complain So Much? Science, Stereotypes, and the Fine Art of Speaking Up

Friday, March 7, 2025. This is for my dear friend, Jennifer DelMonte.

If you’ve ever found yourself asking, why do women complain so much?, congratulations—you’ve just encountered one of the most enduring and conveniently one-sided gender myths in history.

This notion has been whispered in Greek symposia, scribbled in medieval manuscripts, and reinforced by sitcom dads sighing “Yes, dear” since at least the Paleolithic era.

And yet, for a society supposedly obsessed with facts and logic, we’ve done a terrible job actually answering the question.

So let’s do that. Are women actually complaining more?

Are men just not listening? And if women’s complaints are so annoying, why does every love song written by a man sound like a diary entry about not getting enough attention?

Let’s break it down.

The Complaint Divide: Are Women Just More Verbal?

There’s an ancient idea that men are doers and women are talkers.

It turns out, this is mostly a myth. A meta-analysis of 56 studies on gender and talkativeness found zero significant differences in the amount men and women speak (Leaper & Ayres, 2007).

However, the kind of talk differs.

Women use more affiliative speech—expressing emotions, sharing concerns, and validating others—while men tend to use more assertive speech, focusing on control and hierarchy (Basow & Rubenfeld, 2003).

Now, let’s combine this with another key finding:

In professional and public settings, men interrupt women 33% more often than they interrupt other men (Karpowitz & Mendelberg, 2014).

Which means that every time a woman expresses frustration about anything—from unpaid labor to being cold in a restaurant—there’s a high likelihood that someone, somewhere, is already cutting her off.

Women’s speech isn’t just policed in volume, but also in content.

🔹 If a man talks about his bad day? He’s venting.
🔹 If a woman does it? She’s whining.

🔹 If a man complains about his boss? He’s standing up for himself.
🔹 If a woman does it? She’s being difficult.

Welcome to the complaint paradox: women complain just as much as men, but their complaints are heard differently.

The Biological Argument: The Hormonal Fallacy

Now, let’s deal with the classic “It’s just hormones” explanation.

The idea that women are biologically wired to complain more often surfaces in pop psychology and bad stand-up comedy alike. The claim? That estrogen and oxytocin make women more emotionally expressive, while testosterone makes men stoic and resilient.

Sounds neat. Too bad it’s mostly nonsense.

A 2019 study found that testosterone does not make men less emotionally expressive, and that men experience just as much emotional volatility as women—they’re just socialized to hide it (Nave et al., 2019).

In fact, men with higher testosterone levels are more likely to display anger, impulsivity, and externalized blame—which means, if anything, they should be complaining more (van Honk et al., 2004).

Meanwhile, women’s emotional expressiveness is not due to hormones alone.

Socialization plays a massive role. From early childhood, girls are encouraged to use words to resolve conflicts, while boys are rewarded for silence, aggression, or emotional withdrawal (Chaplin, 2015).

So while women appear more verbally expressive, men’s complaints often take nonverbal forms:

🧔‍♂️ Passive-aggressive door slamming? Complaint.
🧔‍♂️ Refusing to talk to you for six hours? Complaint.
🧔‍♂️ Unironically sharing Fight Club memes? Complaint.

Turns out, men complain just as much as women—they’re just using different tools.

The Sociocultural Perspective: Complaining as a Power Strategy

Ever noticed that complaints are only annoying when they come from people with less power?

🔹 When men complain about "feminism ruining everything," it’s framed as political discourse.
🔹 When women complain about the wage gap, it’s called nagging.

🔹 When rich people complain about taxes, it’s economic policy.
🔹 When poor people complain about rent, it’s class warfare.

This is where sociologist Pierre Bourdieu’s concept of symbolic power comes in (Bourdieu, 1984). When marginalized groups (women, minorities, lower-income souls) complain, their grievances are seen as illegitimate because they lack the power to enforce change.

Meanwhile, powerful people’s complaints are framed as intelligent observations about society.

This means that women’s complaints are more likely to be dismissed outright, while men’s complaints are more likely to be taken seriously.

And when your complaints aren’t heard, you repeat them.

Which, ironically, makes it look like women complain more.

The Marriage Complaint Paradox: Who’s Actually Unhappy?

If women are so emotionally exhausting with all their "complaints," you’d expect them to be less happy in relationships than men, right?

Wrong.

Research shows that single women report higher life satisfaction than married women, while married men report higher satisfaction than single men (Dolan, 2018).

This suggests that women’s complaints in relationships aren’t signs of dissatisfaction—they’re bids for improvement (Gottman & Silver, 2015).

And here’s where things get really interesting:

Men are twice as likely to say they "never saw the divorce coming."

Why?

Because their wives had already been complaining for years, and they weren’t listening (Amato & Previti, 2003).

By the time women stop complaining, it’s not because they’re happy. It’s because they’ve emotionally checked out.

So when men say "women complain too much", what they often mean is "women keep trying to communicate about problems I don’t want to deal with."

Final Thought: What If We Stopped Dismissing Complaints?

If you walk away with one thought from this entire discussion, let it be this:

The act of complaining is not a character flaw.

Complaints are the foundation of every social change in human history.

🔹 Every major civil rights movement? Started with complaints.
🔹 Every scientific breakthrough? Began as a complaint about existing knowledge.
🔹 Every major feminist achievement? Somebody, somewhere, was "being difficult."

So maybe the problem isn’t that women complain too much.

Maybe the problem is that we don’t listen enough. Or we don’t know how to complain effectively.

Be Well, Stay Kind, and Godspeed.

REFERENCES:

Amato, P. R., & Previti, D. (2003). People's reasons for divorcing: Gender, social class, the life course, and adjustment. Journal of Family Issues, 24(5), 602-626.

Basow, S. A., & Rubenfeld, K. (2003). “Troubles talk”: Effects of gender and gender‐typing. Sex Roles, 48(3-4), 183-187.

Bourdieu, P. (1984). Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste. Harvard University Press.

Dolan, P. (2018). Happy Ever After: Escaping The Myth of The Perfect Life. Penguin Books.

Gottman, J. M., & Silver, N. (2015). The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work. Harmony Books.

Karpowitz, C. F., & Mendelberg, T. (2014). The Silent Sex: Gender, Deliberation, and Institutions. Princeton University Press.

Nave, G., Nadler, A., Dubois, D., & Zava, D. (2019). Single-dose testosterone administration impairs cognitive reflection in men. Psychological Science, 30(4), 628-635.