Women Conform More than Men Essay

Deborah Tannen’s essay “But What Do You Mean?” focuses on what she claims are differences between men and women when it comes to social interaction. The essay is sectioned into seven categories, in which she talks about how men and women tend to think and react when it comes to apologizing, criticizing, thanking, fighting, praising, complaining, and joking with others. In general, she seems to promote the idea that women tend to be more polite and refined, considering the feelings of others when conversing and taking everything as a formality. In contrast, men are apparently more blunt, taking a more direct approach with matters and being more unconcerned with how they may affect others. Women tend to automatically apologize and thank others

If perceivers often observe a particular group of people engaging in a particular activity, they are likely to believe that the abilities and personality attribute required to carry out that activity is typical of said group. “Both within and across different cultures we find great consistency in standards of desirable gender-role behavior. Males are expected to be independent, assertive, and competitive; females are expected to be more passive, sensitive, and supportive. These beliefs have changed little over the past twenty years within the United States and apparently around the world as well” (Hetherington & Parke, 2016, Chapter 15). These general beliefs and stereotypes likely stem from observations of women and men in differing social roles. In the workforce, women are more likely than men to hold positions of lower status and authority. Conversely, men are less likely than women to be homemakers and are more likely to be employed in the paid workforce. Although these stereotypes hold true in some cases, in today’s society, they are being shattered almost daily. Women are now holding higher positions of authority in the workforce than ever before. In some cases, the woman is the sole breadwinner whilst some men are now taking the role of homemaker and stay at home

Many people confuse the definition of gender and sex. “Gender, on the other hand, refers to the meanings, values, and characteristics that people ascribe to different sexes. Sex is a biological concept, determined on the basis of individual 's primary sex characteristics.” (Blackstone) Society gives social cues on the appropriate behavior for each sex. For example, women are to exert more feminine traits such as being dependent, emotional, passive, innocent, nurturing, and/or self-critical. On the contrary, men should be more

Conformity can happen to anyone; however, certain groups and individuals tend to be more susceptible to conformity than others.

For thousands of years, established gender roles have been a part of our society. Women are commonly known as sensitive, emotional, or passive. On the contrary, men are described as rational, competitive, independent, or aggressive. Believing women are more emotional than men is stereotyping. However, the stereotype is not entirely untrue. Development of gender roles is often conditioned more by environmental or cultural factors than by hereditary or biological factors. The development of gender roles between men and women involves the inference of peer community of each gender, the communication style of male and female and the intimacy or connection level of men and women.

Second, the daily activities of women report that they have more intense experience of emotions than men, more intense expression and comfort to seek out emotional experiences. Women also have greater emotional response, overall warmth, emotional expressiveness and concern for others, than men. Researchers also report that anger is found more in men than women (Costandi, 2013). Women have more intense style of emotional response than men, which would be expected to emerge in both positive and negative domains. In fact, emotional experience stems from the roles men and women fill in our society. Women are considered emotionally expressive and are more sensitive to others’ needs while men are less emotionally responsive (Costandi, 2013). Women and men’s personal history of enacting social roles effect skills and attitudes. Prior experiences build different emotional skills and attitudes, in both and women equally.

Nature vs. Nurture? The debate has obsessed the minds of psychologists and philosophers for many years, each arguing their idea is the right way. ABC aired a TV documentary "Boys and Girls are Different" hosted by John Stossel to show some of the leading feminists ideas and their opponents thoughts.

In her paper on the biological differences in cognition between men and women, Doreen Kimura suggests that the social differences between genders arose out of biological necessity (Kimura 46). Even so, it is difficult to argue that social factors do play a large part in gender in society today. A closer look at both biological and social perspectives will reveal more about the processes that determine gender roles.

How one communicates is also influenced by gender. Studies show that ones sex can place a person in a gender role expectation. Women and Men communicate differently and because sexual identity is defined through same sex parent or role model, women and men can get into gender role expectations. These expectations influence their perception attitudes and behavior that will result in a communication style. This early self-concept can effect each one's interpersonal relations. Women for instance are much-attached human beings they have very early identification with their mothers, and this can cause an on going pattern of role expectation. It can lead to interpersonal

Many people have tried to study the psychological differences between genders and found that there are very few. One such study, conducted by Janet Shibley Hyde, used meta-analysis to compare men’s and women’s reactions to certain social situations. Using the equation difference is equal to the mean score for males minus the mean score for women divided by the within-gender standard deviation, Shibley Hyde found that most differences were close to zero, difference was equal to or less than .1, and very few were large dissimilarities, where difference was above .66 (Shibley Hyde). She also found that differences varied according to social context.

In response to what we have discussed thus far in Interpersonal Communication, I would like to further explore the idea of gender in the interpersonal communication arena. As was said in class, ”gender influences cultural perspectives.” Gender also influences how we view ourselves in society. On the flip side, I’ve seen how society can mold the way we label ourselves in terms of gender.

In order to be able to solve some of the problems associated with gender miscommunications, we should distinguish first between the two different types of communications: verbal communication and nonverbal communication. Verbal communication consists of messages expressed by linguistic means such as the use of intonation, the specific words we choose to say, and the way we are saying them. There are differences in females and males usage of language/verbal communication. As we might expect from traditional sex-role stereotypes, girls tend to establish more egalitarian same-sex groups. Girls use friendly groups as a training ground for cooperation. Boys view friendly conversation among their friends as training for verbal aggression. Females are more verbal, use three times more amount of words than males, they are much more descriptive and use more adjectives. Women are less direct in their communication style. As Prof. Tannen showed in one of her research, women are more indirect in answering questions depends on the situation. They answer questions the way they would like to be answered by men, which means more than just a yes/no answer. However, men answer the way they would like to be answered

Women tend to be more emotional and rational then men, whereas men are far less emotional and react on impulse. The different understanding of the ways that each sex communicates is still to be studied. Women tend to react more emotionally than men, resulting in submerging themselves, mind body and soul into making decisions. Meanwhile men, impulsively react to situations for the sake of having a reason to do so. Men see women as less competent to making decisions that involve a lot of thought, and this is due to women’s

Given that the structure of gender qualities has been a large part of our views, in regards to a variety of issues, a number of people take exception to variances from within these rules. Keeping this in mind, we will discuss the reasons why many individuals are discouraged from crossing traditional gender traits, and closely examine parts of the article assigned for this paper.

An incredibly sensitive subject that has only been silently amplified in the 21st century, is the topic of Sex, Gender, and Women vs. Men. We're living in the time of tiny cellular devices and electric cars, yet with all these technological advances, when it comes to gender equality it almost feels like we've been going around in a ridiculous merry-go-round.