Speaking and being listened to have long been privileges afforded to the realm of men. Men who are typically white, able-bodied, middle-to-upper class, cisgender and heterosexual. 

When a man like this speaks, we're taught to listen; to believe, respect and consider his authority in the matters he presents, whether he has a podcast or a doctorate.  

However, when a woman acts with the same authority, gender-based obstacles soon arise, making it more difficult for her to be taken seriously.  

It doesn't matter if she is equally qualified to speak on the same issues as her male contemporaries, or whether she is coming forward to report sexual violence or domestic abuse. An essence of doubt plagues women's words, but why is that?  

Why do women occupy the space beyond belief as default? Why is it that when women speak, they are presumed to be less credible?  

This is the fundamental question my book, Beyond Belief: A Defence of Gossip and the Women Who Do It, poses. By exploring misogyny and sexism present in the speech attributed to women, like gossip, old wives' tales and bitching, a pattern emerged: as a society, we work extraordinarily hard to disbelieve and discredit women by flattening their words into platitudinal stereotypes meant to chip away at their character, and cast seeds of doubt which exploit existing gender-based biases. Biases compounded by other prejudices surrounding race, religion, gender identity, sexuality and class. 

But we are wrong to think that gossip is a women's only sport; it is something we all participate in. This is because gossip is a consequence of our evolution as higher thinking mammals with an extraordinarily developed frontal lobe, capable of keeping track of multiple relationship dynamics, group politics and social etiquette. In short, we gossip because we are intelligent, not because we aren't. 

Gossip, which is a broad umbrella housing various kinds of social speech, is a fundamental marker of our humanity and reportedly makes up 80 per cent of our conversation, regardless of gender. Because men, ordinarily the gatekeepers of serious speech, the productive kind, the politically minded, the purposeful, of the locker-room variety, the kind that spills out in forums online and transactional conversation, gossip too. We just uphold and treat it differently. 

According to Professor Robin Dunbar, a professor of evolutionary psychology at Oxford University, of that 80 per cent of speech, only one to two per cent is made up of destructive forms of gossip, the ones we might be more familiar with. Yet it is in this one to two per cent that gossip's reputation is shackled as something malicious, frivolous, morally bankrupt, unintelligent and, consequently, female-coded.  

That's not to say that gossip can't be destructive, the heritage of Tatle life, a gossip site criticised for being a place where women came to tear one another down, and was later revealed to be run by a man posing as a woman, has taught us as much. 

The truth is, we are compelled to gossip and discuss the social happenings of the community groups we belong to, in part, by our biology. Tend and befriend, the lesser-known stress response system, is as potent as fight, flight, freeze and fawn and present in all humans, though expressed in the majority by women. This response propels us to seek out others, share information, strengthen community ties and help one another. In short, we use social speech–gossip–as a care system to collectively regulate our nervous systems through social grooming.  

This means that there is resistance, fortitude, and strength to be found in gossip and gossipping, which goes against its reputation as something morally flawed. 

When examining the etymology of the word, it makes sense how something underpinned by human nature has grown to mean something else entirely. Gossip, or God-Sibb as it would have been called during the Medieval era, was genderless, meaning something or someone who stood in relation to God. Evolving throughout the 16th and 17th centuries to mean someone you held a sacred trust in, like your midwife or best friend. This is where gossip evolves to mean a group of women congregating and talking. 

However, the word only becomes gendered negatively when gossip became synonymous with disobedience after plays depicting gossipy women as unruly became popular. It was an image that challenged the masculinity of husbands, humiliating them, by suggesting they were unable to control their wives, something that was considered to be their moral obligation as patriarch. 

The common thread woven through this historical narrative tells us that women who speak up and speak out in a way that challenged patriarchy's narrow definition of masculinity is met with punishment. In this post #MeToo world, we sense this acutely. A moment that should have galvinised us to support survivors has instead been met with resistance and left the origins of the movement started by Tarana Burke over shadowed by white voices.  

The backlash has been severe, propelled by a blooming manosphere who's voices are so powerful that, according to a study from Amnesty International, 73 per cent of Gen-Z women reported that they'd encountered misogyny online on a weekly basis.  

Nevertheless, gossip networks can operate as vital, privileged information exchanges.  

We see this in action in the form of whisper networks, offline and online, where many women congregate to share information about dangerous encounters with romantic partners, colleagues and peers. It was also the mechanism of protection for the victims and survivors of Weinstein, when there was an absence of justice and acountability, but an ever present threat against speaking out. Even Courtney Love warned women in 2005 not to go to a Weinstein party at the Four Seasons cautiously for fear of "being libelled".  

It makes sense then that these systems, though imperfect, are heavily relied upon because trust in formal reporting methods, such as HR and the police, is exceedingly low, particularly so if you're from a disadvantaged or minoritised background.  

These trust networks operate with an undercurrent of mutual understanding that women are bound by the commonality of their shared experiences as women: That there is a certainty nearly all women will experience the sexual violence continuum. 

What this tells us is that, even though women have been punished in every century for resisting coerced silence, they have continued to use their voices. They have continued to talk and maintain informal networks. Even though in this world our voices struggle to break ceilings, have it all, or go our own way, time and time again, we still choose to speak, even when we know what we have to say will be met with inherent disbelief. 

We weave systems of care, whisper warnings, pass along traditions, histories and kin-keep in spite of the concerted efforts of patriarchy to diminish the importance of shared social knowledge. Even when we are told doing so confirms us the sinful daughters of Eve, wicked sisters of Lilith and prey of Lamashtu.  

The lessons we can learn from this are plentiful and filled with hope and resilience.  

Gossip is a form of social grooming that can help us resist discriminatory hardships and predation. It is a political device, entertainment, mechanism for building trust and tool for maintaining our social bonds. Ultimately, gossip is not evil, unintelligent or the passtime of bored housewives. It's an expressions of humanity, but we must use it well and responsibly. Because when we gossip well, we save lives, remember those long gone, and preserve histories unrecorded.  

Perhaps it's time to end the double standard of speaking and embrace what women have been telling us for centuries.   

Beyond Belief: A Defence of Gossip and the Women Who Do It by Katie Baskerville  £20