Gender Issues

[Serena]

School project, we've decided on the subject of gender communication or more appropriately, miscommunication.
We figured this would be a fun topic for a final paper. There are four of us and we've been researching different topics but could use some help.
Now that we have to think about it, we're drawing a blank.
help

 

[Deb in IA]

Not sure what type of help you want, but here is something I found when I Googled "communication styles and gender differences"

Gender differences in communication styles.
Notes for discussion by Walter vom Saal


Below are summaries of two books that claim there are significant and consistent differences in communication styles between men and women. One is a popular book for the general public; the second is more professionally oriented and based on research. It is interesting how much overlap there is in the views of these two authors.

Gray, John (1992). Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus: a practical guide for improving communication and getting what you want in relationships. New York: HarperCollins.

This book was a best seller in 1995; it is entertaining and easy to read. The author argues that men and women are “from different planets”: they have different needs, goals, values, and communication styles. He claims that understanding these differences is the key to successful relationships. Differences include:

- when talking about a problem, women want empathy and understanding but men offer solutions.

- a woman’s sense of self is defined through her feelings and the quality of her relationships; a man’s sense of self is defined through his ability to achieve results.

- women are relationship oriented; men are goal oriented.

- mistakes women and men make in conversations: a woman follows her natural tendency to offer unsolicited advice, but the man sees it as questioning his competence and ability; a man follows his natural tendency to offer solutions, but the woman sees it as invalidating her feelings.

- women cope with stress by reaching out and talking; men cope with stress by withdrawing (Chapter 3: “men go to their caves and women talk").

- women want to feel cherished; men want to feel needed.

- women want respect and devotion; men want appreciation and admiration.

Tannen, Deborah (1990). You just don’t understand: women and men in conversation. New York: Ballantine Books (paperback).

This book is an easy-to-read description of the ways women and men miscommunicate because of their “different words and different worlds.” Summary:

MEN:
WOMEN:
live in a world of status live in a world of connections
conversations are negotiations for power conversations are negotiations for closeness
want to preserve independence
want to preserve intimacy
seek to win, avoid failure
seek closeness, avoid isolation
avoid taking orders (since that means low status and loss of independence)
ok with taking orders (if it is perceived as forming a connection)
seek control
seek understanding
prefer inequality and asymmetry
prefer equality and symmetry
are adversarial (with conflicting goals)
are synergistic (with common goals)
value differences
value similarities
goal of conversation: transmit information
goal of conversation: maintain interaction
offer advice
seek connection and understanding

IMPORTANT NOTE:

Although these two authors suggest a general agreement on ways in which men and women differ, not everyone agrees with them. In particular, it is critical to understand that even if there may be average tendencies in the directions they suggest, these generalizations certainly do not apply to all men and all women. There are certainly some men who would fit the communication characteristics described here as common to women, and there are certainly some women who would fit the characteristics described here as common to men. As in other characteristics we have discussed in this course, it may be more useful to understand that different people may have different ways of communicating, than to assume that all women communicate one way and all men communicate another way.

And here's another article with references:

Gender Differences in Communication


All of us have different styles of communicating with other people. Our style depends on a lot of things: where we're from, how and where we were brought up, our educational background, our age, and it also can depend on our gender. Generally speaking, men and women talk differently although there are varying degrees of masculine and feminine speech characteristics in each of us. But men and women speak in particular ways mostly because those ways are associated with their gender.

The styles that men and women use to communicate have been described as "debate vs. relate", "report vs. rapport, or "competitive vs. cooperative". Men often seek straightforward solutions to problems and useful advice whereas women tend to try and establish intimacy by discussing problems and showing concern and empathy in order to reinforce relationships.

Jennifer Coates, in her book Women, Men and Language (New York: Longman Inc., 1986) studied men-only and women-only discussion groups and found that when women talk to each other they reveal a lot about their private lives. They also stick to one topic for a long time, let all speakers finish their sentences and try to have everyone participate. Men, on the other hand, rarely talked about their personal relationships and feelings but "competed to prove themselves better informed about current affairs, travel, sport, etc.". The topics changed often and the men tried to "over time, establish a reasonably stable hierarchy, with some men dominating conversation and others talking very little".

Dr. Lillian Glass' book He Says, She Says: Closing the Communication Gap Between the Sexes (The Putnam Berkeley Group) details her findings on the many differences in the way men and women communicate, both verbally and non-verbally. You can have a look at what she thinks are the differences in:








Online Communication
Since gender isn't readily apparent (unless specified) in online communication, can one determine another person's gender just by reading their written words? Susan Herring thinks so. In a 1994 talk at a panel called Making the Net *Work*, she said that men and women have recognizably different styles in posting to the Internet. She backed up this claim with research where she analyzed messages posted by men and women to various newsgroups. Read a transcript of her talk for all the details.

To find out how women and men feel about communicating with each other online, have a look at Gladys We's graduate research paper entitled Cross-Gender Communication in Cyberspace where she discusses the results of a survey she sent to both men and women who were online.

A study that "investigates whether the use of pseudonyms mitigates gender-based differences of communication patterns in a computer-mediated communication (CMC) context" was submitted for presentation to the 45th Annual Conference of the International Communication Association, 1995. Gender, Pseudonyms, and CMC: Masking Identities and Baring Souls by J. Michael Jaffe, Young-Eum Lee, Lining Huang, & Hayg Oshagan is an interesting look at how the use of nicks and the lack of non-verbal cues affect gender-based communication patterns.



Note: Links have not been updated therefore some may no longer be valid.

Here are some interesting links I've found about gender and language. Have you got an essay, article, website, rant, etc. related to gender differences in communication? Send me an email and I'll put a link to it right here!


Male Logic, Women's Intuition

CMC Magazine: Gender Without Bodies

Words That Count Women In

Gender and Language Use, sociohistorical background on communicative styles by Lydie Meunier, Ph.D.

The Weaker Sex by Robert Puryear

The Party Line by Rachel Rafelman. A look at parties, conversations and the gender split.

"They" by Michael Crichton

The Ladies Room - the film. A documentary about what really goes on in there!

Stereotypes and Men's & Women's Discourse by Carlo De Rycke. A personal view on the relation between language and gender, based on the book Gender Voices (1989) by David Graddol and Joan Swann.

Information and research on gender styles in communication by Susan Githens.

Review of Work on Gender and Language by Clive Grey

Gender Differences in the Chinese Language by Marjorie Chan

Book Review by Laura Bryannan of Deborah Tannen's book, You Just Don't Understand

The Berkeley Women and Language Group encourages excellence and innovation in the study of language and gender.

Gender Language Style and Group Composition in Internet Discussion Groups by Victor Savicki, Dawn Lingenfelter and Merle Kelley.

Gender and communication in organizations by Dr. Beth Vanfossen for ITROW's Women and Expression Conference.

Research shows that socially dominant men are at greater risk for early death.

Breaking out of Binaries: Reconceptualizing Gender and its Relationship to Language in Computer-Mediated Communication by Michelle Rodino.

The Filled Pause Research Center Home Page

On-Line Smiles: Does Gender Make a Difference in the Use of Graphic Accents? by Diane F. Witmer and Sandra Katzman

Differences in Gender Communication: UC News Wire May/98

Gender Differences in Physician-Patient Communication

Gender Differences In Communication a paper by Mark A. Tripp

Language Gender and Identity: A social-psychological study by C.Demetriades 1997 (abstract). Examines the relationship between homosexuality and language to discover how gay identity is linguistically expressed.

Women and Performance. A journal for discussion on gender and representation. Issue #17, Sexuality & Cyberspace, now online.

Him/Her: discourses of masculinity in a Brazilian magazine, 1969-1972. by Marko Monteiro

(You Make Me Feel Like A) Virtual Woman by Jesse Kornbluth.

Argument Essay based on You Just Don't Understand by Mayo Takeuchi

Papers Relating to Gender and Computing, resources from Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility.

Gender and teaching: A study of teacher gender and verbal interaction patterns in same-sex and mixed-sex groups in the classroom. Lush, B. (1997) Dissertation abstract.

Gender Differences in Language Use: A study of complimenting from Bath, South West England. Roberts, J. (1998) Dissertation abstract.

Linguistik online issue 1/99: Language and Gender Articles covering theoretical and methodological issues, feminist language change and conversation analysis.

Gender Games: Doing Business with the Opposite Sex! by Business Educator & Speaker, Candy Tymson.

Good luck!!

 

[clgwli]

Check out John Gottman. He has had some awesome books on this subject.

 

[meeskamouska]

It is important to look at the way gender is communicated even within gender groups. This is actually a much larger topic than just miscommunication between the two.

Think about ways in which women and men are spoken about. The words we use in which to identify indivuals. An example: steward (mostly male)/ stewardess (definitel y female)/ flight attendant (gender neutral). Examine words that describe femininity and masculinity. I like to think of myself as a strong woman. When most people describe what they think femininity means they don't include the word strong. They may say kind, caring, maternal, etc.... does that make me less feminine?? Or look at a masculinty...while I may look for a sensitive man, most popular consensus is that sensitivity and caring aren't often used to decribe our idea of a man.

Also look at the way we identify relationships between the two. Especially sexual realationships: without being to graphic or offensive think of the way the act of sex is casually discussed. It is an act that in most common talk is done to a woman... i.e. A man would say :"I ****** her." A woman would say" : "I got *****."

The verbage that we often use still shows a very male dominated society. Gender communication is very driven by the social expectations that exist in our society.

Think about the way women speak about women. And about how men speak about other men. Look at the gendering that is done from early on...pink for girls, blue for boys. How individuals talk to babies...often with girls it is something like "look how pretty she is...what an angel"/ boys "look at how tough he is....he's got quite a grip". Really if you weren't told the sex of an infant they could be speaking of the same child, but perception and gendering creates a bias in our expections of strengths and behaviors.

Sorry, got a little long winded.....Good luck!!!

 

[John Smith1]

What? Did you say something?

 

[LivelyLissa]

Here's a classic:

 

[meeskamouska]

What? Did you say something?

Hahaha....exactly!!!!

 

[Serena]

Perfect! Thanks everyone. This is a big help. I'm not sure what exactly the group will decide on but this gives me some options, and that cartoon will be great to pass around the class.