Gender And Gendered Communication

The dynamic between male and female is extremely complex. Over the course of human history, men have primarily dominated over women in nearly every aspect of human interaction and daily life. Despite the large progress that has been made in recent decades, women are still heavily subordinated by the male gender both in the workforce and in the private sphere. Examples of this domination of men can be seen in many aspects of everyday life including: interpersonal and social interaction, family, among peers, in education, and in the media.

In many shops, there seems to be an obvious separation between boys and girls items, for example, the birthday cards, books, clothes, and toys. This is shown in a variety of ways the boy's items are mainly the color blue and the books have pictures of either action figures, superheroes or tools. Whereas the girl's items are mainly the color pink. The books show pictures of fairies, princess, and Bratz. The cards also have the theme of the color pink for girls and blue for boys. The girl's cards have a lot of sparkles and pretty pictures whereas the boy's cards are covered in camo kind of illustrations and also have action figures on the covers. The children's clothes are separated into sections where there are labels for the boy's clothes and labels for the girl's clothes. The girl's clothing is all pretty and pink, it is covered in sparkles. Whereas boys clothing has camo patterns, blue colors, and pictures of action figures.

In present day all around the world, society has certain expectations for the actions and behaviors of males and females. There are many factors in our everyday lives that contribute to the gender norms that society has set. This essay will discuss how situations in life can play a part in how people treat other people based on their gender. It is believed that males are the leaders of our world, but in present day woman can do as much as men can do. From The Journal of Marriage and Family, Hu states, “Differentiated gender roles in adulthood are rooted in one’s gender role socialization. In order to understand the persistence of gender inequalities in the domestic sphere, we need to examine the gendered patterns of children’s housework time.”(2015, P.1). Gender roles are society’s expectations of the proper behavior, attitudes, and activities of males and females that they must be taught. These roles define how females and males are viewed in society, their household, and workplace. In The Journal of Sports behavior by Hardin, he states, “Although gender role differences from biological and “Natural” exists in popular consciousness, research has long demonstrated that instead, many are long time socially constructed… Individuals understand their gender because they are given names and treated in particular ways, such as dress in pink for girls and blue for boys, that reflect social construction of gender. Bandura's social cognitive theory is key in understanding the factors in socialization”(2009, P.3). Bandura's theory of of social cognition is that behavior, environmental events, and cognitive factors are the main keys that shape attitudes and actions of an individual. Although, gender roles play a very big part in our society, specific genders are treated differently while dealing with peer influence, media influence, as well as employment.

Another interesting statement I would like to bring to the surface is Alvarez writes in her book that “boys are born men but girls turn into women” (72). This made me think of the BBC YouTube clip we watched in class. Within this video a mother, father, and daughter are getting prepared for their daughters sweet fifteen. One of the first things I recognized in this film was that the father a male was speaking about and for the females when they were in the same room as them listening to what he had to say. This is a problem in itself as the male voices his and silences the women, in addition, he is speaking on a subject that he does not even fully understand, women. For arguments sake a women would never speak about a man and what it means to be one. This power dynamic within this family is troubling and shows the dominance of one gender over

In the essay Sex, Lies, and Conversation Deborah Tannen focuses on the differences and lack of communication between men and women though observations. She came to the conclusion that men were not lacking in their listening, but they were however listening in a different way than the women did. On the other hand, men aren’t the only people that have terrible communication skills. In many ways, these differences between the two genders can cause major conflict when not understood by the opposite side. A few examples of lack of communication may be when women don’t decide where they would like to eat, men who walk away from an argument rather than talking it out, and their decision making processes.

During the early 1800s into the nineteenth century it was believed that men and women came from two separate spheres. These spheres influenced the way gender roles were shaped and perceived. Suggesting that women belonged in the household, apart of the private sphere and men belonged in the economic world, apart of the public sphere. Men and women were understood to be polar opposites and because of this, women were oppressed. Female sexuality was defined as “passionlessness,” and only for the purpose of reproduction. We learn that women were considered “voracious” for expressing their sexuality however, men were encouraged to express their sexuality as part of maintaining power, prestige, and masculinity. (Cott, 1978, 222). Men

In the article “HE SAID, SHE SAID. “Mine’s Higher” vs. “We’re the Same”, Deborah Tannen explains that men and women have different conversation styles. Although conversation styles of men and women are not quite same, but the ultimate goal of communication for both men and women always stays the same, to connect with others and to be more powerful. Men like talking while focusing on hierarchy, on the contrary, women like talking topics that can reinforce the relationship. The author states that verbal communication is similar to rituals, and differences of rituals can cause misinterpretations and behavior changes.

In Deborah Tannen’s essay “I’ll Explain It to You: Lecturing and Listening”, she asserts the belief that even though men and women speak the same structural language, their motivations for speech and conversational patterns are very different. In the earlier years of development, Tannen observes that girls use speech to find confirmation and establish intimacy, whereas boys use speech to assert their independence and attain social status. After transitioning to adulthood, women find themselves bored and constantly nodding as men lecture them. Tannen provides specific observations of gender communication that portrays women as passive reactors in a conversation and men as the dominant aggressors. For example, Tannen writes that men tend to

“Sex, Lies, and Conversation,” by Deborah Tannen, very clearly outlined many of the problems in communication between genders. Men and women are raised differently and understand the world in different, yet similar, ways. Reading this article gave me great pleasure in that it verified what I’ve observed in the world. Men and women do not communicate the same. Physically, men and women converse in different ways such as men appearing to be distracted vocally and attention-wise, while women stick to one topic in great detail while holding eye-contact (Tannen, 1990). This distracted appearance makes women assume men aren’t paying attention, but the “‘participatory listenership’ is often perceived by men as interruption, intrusion and lack of attention,”

Gender communication and identity arise from direct definition, which is an explicit definition that shapes and tells us who we are through the labels made by parent/guardians and peers based on our behaviors (Wood, pg. 186). Peers tend to greatly emphasize gender conformity, and this concept was quite visible in the movie between Claire and Bender. The two get into an argument about their family backgrounds and it is obvious to see that due to their contrasting upbringing, they both differed on viewpoints of life. Because of these differences, Claire showed to take offense to Bender's demeaning statements and insults. She also showed her vulnerability side as she began to cry and reveal her feelings. On the contrary, Bender had no shame in

Communication between males and females has always been somewhat complicated. Because we are arguing that males and females have different cultures we wanted to take a look at what some of these differences might be. According to our research the inherent differences between male and female culture are the different roles that society holds for them and the ways these roles lead to different communication styles. The stereotypes that men and women grow up with affect the types of ways in which they communicate. We first wanted to take a look at how they specifically differ while men and women are arguing or having normal conversations. We also looked at the different types of networks that men and women

The town of Smalls Ville was quiet. The clock in the town square struck midnight, when all of the sudden, a huge blast which was followed by the screech of sirens penetrated the night. A dark figure is running out through the blast carrying two bags and the smoke from the blast covered his escape as the new hole within the banks vault is blocked by the smoke from the blast. The figure disappears into the night as the police block off the area to the public. As two police men investigating the robbery start to speak with one and other a crowd of people are trying to see what’s going on.

Mattei then goes on to talk about the different discourse styles of men in women. She says that while women tend to try and form connections, as shown previously in Tannen’s study on coherence, men see conversations as being “won” or “lost,” (as cited in Case 1994, 149; Luttrell 1995, 433; Tannen 1990). She says that men’s style of discourse puts them at an advantage in a place like Congress. Mattei states, “ Not coincidentally, the purpose of male communication is consistent with male’s retention of established power in a competitive political system,” (Mattei 443). (Mattei 442-43).

There exists a disparity in the communication phenomenon between men and women. This disparity according to scholars can be attributed to the male dominance in the society today and relationship tensions between couples. A study on cross-sex conversations showed that, when men and women engage in a friendly conversation, they do so as equals but they do not play the same roles in the communication. Women tend to ask more questions and likely to utter utterances that encourage responses from the other speaker. Men, on the other hand, are more likely to interrupt their partner’s conversations and make direct opinions and facts to control or dominate the conversation. Thus, the communication phenomenon between men and women is strikingly distinct.

Throughout history men have always been consider to be the more dominant and aggressive sex therefore allowing them to take on more of a powerful and leadership like role amongst their community. Although this sort of power has been in play for generations it has allowed for woman to not always be able to express their opinions on a particular subject or be heard by the male population at all. In today’s society we still see many examples of how men are still dominating culture and the language that surrounds it through the idea of muted group theory and the relationship it has between men and woman