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Men and women
I’m reviewing a book for work called She Marketing - the science of marketing to women by Amanda Stevens. It’s a pretty interesting read, especially on the different ways men and women communicate. According to Stevens, who has studied in-depth research on the language behaviours:
* Women sound more emotional in conversation because they use around five tones, whereas men only use three tones
* Women speak in a softer voice and use pitch and inflection to emphasise points. Men use volume to emphasise a point
* Women want to discuss and explore all aspects of a topic and spend more time on it than men like.
* Women make indirect accusations, like “Why do you often do that?” Men make direct accusations, like “You always do that!”
* Women like to relate, while men like to debate.
* Women interrupt all others less and allow others to interrupt them. Men interrupt others more and allow fewer interruptions, especially from women.
* Women are more cooperative when talking. Men are more comeptitive with talk.
* Women show concern and try to establish empathy and support for others. Men try to fix things and give advice to to others.
Of course these are generalisations and not everyone will fit into their gender role, but it does go to show how men and women were made to complement each other, doesn’t it?
She also has some pretty interesting research and statistics on rearing boys and girls, which she has candidly put in a hypothetical between Julie and Jason. This next bit is long, so only read if you’re interested. I’m keen to see what parents who raise boys and girls think about this.
From page 51 of the book:
Picture this. Non-identical twins are conceived. They will be born approximately 38 weeks later as a boy and a girl, Julie and Jason, with very different brains and wiring that will determine primal behaviour and response…
…The day after they are born, Jason will look at the shapes on the mobile above their cots longer than Julie. At 12 weeks old, Julie will look at human faces longer than her brother.
By their first birthday, Jason will prefer watching a film showing cars to one showing a person and Julie will show the opposite preference.
When it comes to sound, infant females are much less tolerant. One researcher believes that they may hear noises as being twice as loud as do males. Baby girls become irritated and anxious about noise, plain or discomfort more readily than baby boys do.
At four months, Julie will be able to distinguish photographs of people she knows from photographs of strangers. Jason will not.
Although Julie and Jason will experience a similar social conditioning and environment, their development will diverge significantly. For one thing, because of her larger communication centre, Julie will grow up to be more talkative than her brother. In most social contexts, she will use many more forms of communication than Jason will.
In their first few precious months of life, Julie’s skills in eye contact and facial gazing will increase by 400%, while these skills in Jason will not increase at all. Julie will also respond to voice tonality in a more hightened way, able to understand the emotional implications of tonality changes more than Jason.
So why is Julie such a highly tuned machine for reading faces, hearing emotional tones in voices and responding to unspoken clues in others? Think about it. A machine like that is built for connection. That’s the main job of the girl brain, and that’s what it drives a female to do from birth. This is the result of the genetic and evolutionary hardwiring that once had - and probably still has - real consequences for female survival. In the context of hundreds of thousands of years ago, if you can read faces and voices, you can tell what an infant needs. You can predict what a bigger, more aggressive male is going to do. And since you’re smaller, you probably need to bond with other females to fend off attacks from a caveman or other intruder or predator.
As they grow up, the differences in Julie and Jason’s brain structures will have a continuing impact on their beahviour.
If they fall into the statistics on gender and education, Jason will be four times more likely to need remedial reading assistance.
When they are playing at school, Jason will be far more likely to show direct aggression such as hitting, whereas Julie will be more likely to show covert or relational aggression, such as gossip or verbal insults.
This is certainly not to say that young boys don’t ever display social behavioru and girls don’t compete with each other…but all in all, Julie is less likely to get into conflict and if she does, it is likely to be resolved more quickly. At a fundamental level, women’s brains are designed for empathy, whereas men’s are built for understanding and building systems.
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I remember hearing something that talked about a study that was done in which adults were asked to hold a baby. The baby was sometimes a girl wearing pink, a boy wearing blue, and also sometimes a girl wearing blue and a boy that was dressed in pink. The adults were told the pink babies were girls and the boys were wearing blue. They found that people tended to bounce the boys on their laps or engage in quite physical play, whilst the girls were usually cradled and talked to.
Sorry, my point is, how much of it is intrinsic, and how much of it do we nurture by the way we treat kids from the time of birth?
My kids are both the very independent “let me do it myself types”, but my son is far more cuddly than my daughter was at the same age. He is also far more in-tune with the tones we use speaking to him. I can play ‘crocodile’ and snap his hand and he giggles. But if I say “No!”, and tap his wrist with the same force, he cries. At his age, his sister was far more likely to just try and slap my wrist back!
Actually I can’t really relate to many of the things she has described there. Which is not to say it’s not true of course - after all I only have one of each, so they might just be odd
My son is a really big talker - not more so than my daughter, but he’s probably equally as communicative at the corresponding age.
Although, he is definitely far grubbier than his sister! He’ll try to pick up and eat a cockroach whilst she’ll run away and freak out if she sees it move. There are definitely differences between them.
I tend to make direct accusations….
I guess that’s the whole debate - nature vs. nurture (i.e. genetic predisposition vs the way you are raised). This author was definitely leaning towards the nature side.
I’m undecided. I reckon a bit of both? for the “communication” section, I can relate to lots of them (indirect accusations, empathy, dislike of conflict), but others I can’t. For example, my husband is always the one telling me to keep my voice down!
I fit very few of the ‘Jason’ generalisations… Perhaps because I was raised with three Julie’s?
As for the rest of it, from spending a lot of time talking to men, you can definitely see that those generalisations about communication are pretty valid. As to whether that’s nature or nurture - I dunno!
I still like films about cars. Does that make me equivalent to a one year old??
Another interesting thing about this book was that all the marketing techniques it outlined for women - informal settings, conversation, non-direct and thoughtful communication, good food and drink, pleasing setting - reminded me of my church!
Does this mean we’re “marketing” (so to speak) to women?!
You can tell that book was written by a girl…
Perhaps I should have said “can you tell that book was written by a girl?”, but then technically that is a question, not an ‘indirect accusation’
lol turns.
It all sounds accurate in general. I’m with you soph, that our church is definitely more girl-oriented. But I think 21st century culture in general is too. How do you appeal to both, I wonder!