Edel Coffey: In a world of noise, silence truly is golden

"Silence has been proven to boost cell growth in the brain and even a ten-minute rest in a quiet darkened room has been shown to improve memory."

Edel Coffey:  Photo: Ray Ryan

There’s a line in Claire Keegan’s novella Foster that goes: ‘Many’s the man lost much just because he missed a perfect opportunity to say nothing.’ It’s a line that has regularly come to mind over the years, and it came back to me again last week as I listened to the writer Tahmima Anam, author of The Startup Wife, talking about how women can use silence to their advantage in the workplace.

Anam has worked in tech startups for the last ten years, a particularly male world, and has learned a thing or two about using her voice in that environment. Staying silent, particularly in the male-dominated world of tech, seems to go against everything women have been told about making our voices heard. But Anam is very clear that she is in favour of women speaking out to create institutional change. Her point is that a lot of the talking women do in the workplace is motivated by making other people feel comfortable.