In their article published today in Science, "Are Women Really More Talkative Than Men?" Mehl, et al. address what has become a cultural "truth" quantified in the book "The Female Brain" by Brizendine. There it is claimed that women use about 20,000 words a day while a men use about 7,000. But Mehl and colleagues have studied the actual conversations of nearly 400 people over the past 8 years. The histograms above from their online supplement display the findings. Women spoke an average of 16,215 words a day with a standard deviation of 7301 words. Men spoke an average of 15,669 words a day with a standard deviation of 8633 words. A one-sided t-test results in a p-value of 0.2479. Hardly a significant finding. Each group spoke about 16,000 words a day with large individual variation. This illustrates perfectly the quote by novelist Ivy Compton-Burnett, "There is more difference within the sexes than between them."
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