It's certainly consistent with my experience that women talk more than men, though admittedly the only evidence I have is purely anecdotal and I can't put any numbers on it.
It seems to me, in fact, that most women cannot not talk if there's anybody visible within hearing distance. They'll talk even when they have nothing to say, a proposition I've tested several times with various women in my life, including my wife, my sisters, and assorted in-laws. For instance: sitting at the kitchen table with my wife over a pot of coffee, both of us reading, and I'll get short comments at random intervals on the book she's reading, which interrupt my concentration without my actually understanding what she said. So we have this exchange:
Me: Uh, sorry, what'd you say?
Her: Oh, nothing.
But ya gotta pay attention because at some point she might say something you need to hear, and you'll get that "You don't listen to me" complaint if you miss it. And if you say, as I did once, "If you have nothing to say, please stop saying it," the odds that you'll be sleeping on the couch for at least one night zoom upwards. So I take my book and coffee into the living room, still within hearing distance but out of sight, and the comments stop.
